


rara avis

by voicedimplosives



Category: Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Neo-Noir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2018-12-31 14:16:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12134262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives
Summary: rara avis: a rarity; from Latin, "rare bird"





	1. jasper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We saw him smoking by the newspaper stand | There's something odd about his gloved left hand"
> 
>   
> Thompson Twins, _We are Detective_

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid....He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man...”

Yeah, Darcy thought. Raymond Chandler got it. I'd give my left tit for a man like that. She looked up to survey the deserted forties-themed diner; she hadn't heard the bell on the front door ring but she had a couple of drunks in booth six who she should probably keep an eye on, in case one of them vomited or passed out. She shook her head. Halfway through the graveyard shift on a Wednesday night (now Thursday morning, technically) was hardly a popular time to be out and about in the somewhat trendy but still mostly industrial Long Island City, especially at the unfashionably anachronistic Black Cat Diner. She tried to look out at the street through the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran along the front of the place, but all she could see or hear was the heavy rain battering them. The October air was starting to turn sharp at night too, sinking into that kind of cold that chilled the bones. Two people was actually a pretty solid turnout, all things considered.

I sure as shit wouldn't be here if they weren't paying me to hold this counter up, she mused, topping off her lukewarm cup of watery coffee and returning to her novel. It's not like this was the job of her dreams, not by a long shot. But “interning” for Jane, if you could call it that, paid no bills and in order to get this gig, which included actually profitable weekend and morning shifts, she'd had to agree to one all-nighter per week. In any case, the lack of clientele plus her ability to multitask usually meant that by the time three am rolled around, it was just her, her cup of joe, and whatever dime novel she'd pulled from the local library. Yeah, so she was a little stuck in the past and a little obsessed with pulp fiction. So sue her.

She'd seen a Norse god fall out of the sky, after all. A giant, alien robot with a flame-thrower for a face had burned a town to the ground around her and her friends, for Christ's sake. Was it so horrible that she might be into the idea of unraveling some elaborate corporate espionage or catching a cheating husband after surviving that unthinkable nightmare? The mundane criminal. That's what she wanted to think about. She checked booth six again. One of the drunks was missing. She rose from the stool she'd been warming for the last hour and walked over to the remaining lush, who was slumped over on the table.

“Hey dude, you alive? Where's your friend? You two gonna order anything else?” she asked in a bored tone.

“ He's na... namyfrieenn...” the man slurred back at her.

“Cool. Good for you, very progressive of you both, what with the sharing of all that saliva here in this very public place. You need more coffee?” Darcy retorted, clocking the man's rail-thin frame and heavily paint-splattered t-shirt. Hipsters, she thought. She prided herself on her restraint when she only rolled her eyes mentally.

“Poopin',” the man answered.

“Way more information than I ever needed or wanted, my guy. How about another cup of coffee, maybe a bowl of carbs with a side of more carbs?”

The man sat up, rolled his head along his shoulder towards her, nodding even as his lips curled and he blew raspberries her way. She headed back behind the glowing, spearmint-colored counter to write the order down and send it to the kitchen, then reached for the pot. By the time she'd gotten back to their table the friend was there, and the men's tongues were once again wrapped around each others tonsils.

“Ah, young love,” she jibed, filling up both their cups. “Spaghetti'll be out soon, guys.” They didn't respond, so she returned to her stool, checked the door once more for good measure, and ventured back into the gritty world of Phillip Marlowe.

+

Darcy was running late the next morning, though she knew Jane wouldn't notice. Thursdays were, without fail, the nadir of her week. She'd been at the diner until eight, she was jittery and exhausted and hadn't even showered before taking the subway into Manhattan. She used the stuffed backpack slung over one shoulder to push her way through the daily crowd of gawkers and protesters gathered around the entrance of the Avengers tower, stopping to show her credentials at the security desk inside.

“Another fun shift at the Black Cat, Darce?” asked Sal, her favorite of the revolving crew of big, burly men stationed between the door and the elevator.

Darcy grunted in response. He chuckled, handing her ID back to her and nodding. “You at least read something good this week?”

“Yeah, finally getting around to The Big Sleep,” she answered, her voice gravelly from disuse.

“Ah, Chandler, the king,” he nodded again in appreciation. Darcy offered him her best approximation of a smile and stumbled towards the elevator. It dinged just as she arrived and she took its ready presence as a good omen, checking her phone while the passengers filtered out then stepping inside. She pressed the button for floor thirty one and waited, eyes drifting back to the tabloid headlines she'd been reading. Just as the doors were closing, a gloved hand appeared in the narrowing crack. They bounced off of it, jerking back to reveal a tall, dark-haired man dressed in all black. The gloved hand piqued her curiosity, and when she looked up at him she felt a jolt at the loveliness of his deep-set, cerulean eyes, the strong line of his stubble-covered jaw.

He seemed to like what he saw as well, because he paused for a moment, giving her a once over that had her sweating a little and wondering if she should file a complaint with Human Resources. But he said nothing, simply stepped into the elevator with her, pressed the button for floor seventy seven, and turned to face the door. Darcy knew there was at least two feet of space between their bodies but suddenly it felt as though the air between them hummed with electricity. They rode in silence, Darcy sneaking glances at the musculature of his broad back and thick arms, visible through the thin, long-sleeved shirt. He must've been about a foot taller than her, which meant that while she pretended to concentrate on the contents of her phone, it was all too easy for her to stare at his very well-toned ass as well.

It's not like Darcy didn't recognize him. The Winter Soldier. Formerly Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. It's just that she had about seventeen thousand questions and not a single one of them was appropriate to ask a total stranger, let alone one who'd been through what the news said he had. So she gawked instead, but like, in a subtle and totally mature way. Or so she thought.

The elevator dinged to alert her they'd arrived at her floor, and just as she was stepping out she heard his voice rasp out behind her, “You shoulda taken a picture. Woulda lasted longer.”

She turned to see him watching her, amusement pulling ever so faintly at one corner of his mouth and one eyebrow raised. Okay, so not subtle or mature, she revised. Her shock at hearing him speak made her mouth drop down into what she was _sure_ was a very attractive 'o' shape. Before she could say anything, the doors closed between them.

+

Jane was happily typing away at her computer with one hand. A glazed donut that dripped coffee onto her notes was hanging, forgotten, in the other. She didn't look up when Darcy entered the lab, and Darcy took the opportunity to duck into the adjacent lavatory and change into fresh jeans and a band t-shirt that might almost pass for business super-casual, if you didn't look too closely at the text printed under the picture of its members. When she came back the donut was still dripping, still forgotten, so Darcy looped her finger through the hole and snagged it out of Jane's hand, taking a bite before placing it on a napkin she'd grabbed from her bag.

“Hey!” Jane cried indignantly.

“Free bite protocol activated due to donut neglect and document abuse,” Darcy answered, pointing to the coffee-splattered papers under the napkin. “Them's the rules, Jane.” Jane grumbled and turned her attention back to typing. Apparently that was as much of a greeting as Darcy was going to get today, which she figured meant that the calculations were going well. She organized some piles of papers lying on various tables around the lab for a while, planning her approach, before interrupting the serene hush that had fallen over the room by asking, “Hey Jane, quick question?”

Jane said nothing.

“Jane?”

Nothing.

“Jane, the building's on fire!”

Nothing.

“Help Jane, I'm choking!”

Nothing.

“Jane, I accidentally lost your star charts from last weekend!”

“ _What_?” Jane roared, pushing herself up from the desk and looking around around frantically.

“Ah, there you are. Welcome back, thanks for joining us mortals here on Earth. Sorry to interrupt, just a quick q and then I'll leave you in peace, promise.”

“Where are my charts, Darcy?” Jane demanded.

“They're fine, Jesus. I filed them with all the others. How about no more coffee for you this morning, hmm? Listen, talk to me about Captain America's friend. The Winter Soldier. What's his deal? Does he live here, in the building? Is he like... still a, uh, bad guy?” Darcy asked, figuring she better go for direct over nuanced while she still had Jane's attention.

Jane sighed, sinking back into her chair and screwing her face up at her intern. “I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Do you have the equations Erik sent me two days ago? Leave them out for me when you find them, okay? I'll need them in a couple hours.” With that, her focus returned to the keyboard in front of her.

Damn. She wasn't exactly sure what sort of dirt she was expecting Jane to have, so it had probably been an exercise in futility to even ask. She hadn't made too many other friends here in the building; only popping in a few days a week didn't really form the kind of deep, meaningful friendships that led to gab sessions about the wickedly hot centenarians roaming the halls. Dead ends. Dead ends everywhere.

As she began typing up some of Jane's handwritten data, she tried to suss out another avenue for getting the skinny on this guy. Just think, Lewis. What would Philip Marlowe do?

+

That evening, after she'd suffered substantial complaining while forcing Jane to come up for air and eat her lunch and had dragged herself through the dinner rush at the Black Cat, Darcy shuffled up the crumbling steps of her dilapidated tenement building.

“Home sweet home,” she whispered as she rested her forehead gently against the door of her apartment, her key missing as she jammed it towards the door blindly several times before it found purchase in the hole and turned. She pushed inwards, taking in the scene before her with a sinking sense of unease. If there was one thing she didn't want to deal with after the day she'd had, it was her sketchy roommate Brigid and Brigid's even sketchier boyfriend, Kyle. So of course there they were, lolling on top of each other on the couch in the girls' minuscule living room, watching some bowling competition at top volume. Darcy took a deep, calming breath and closed the door behind her. She turned towards the kitchenette, located to the right of the door and separated by a wall from the rest of the communal area. She opened the freezer, pulling out a pint of Ben & Jerry's.

“'Sup Darcy? Looking foine tonight,” Kyle's reedy voice drifted out through the haze of marijuana smoke from the other room.

She bent down to dig through the fridge, grabbing a Tupperware full of leftover spaghetti and two beers. Fortifications acquired, she turned to face the music.

“Hey guys, Brigid, Kyle. How's it going?” she asked, aiming for cheerful and not at _all_ annoyed because Brigid apparently had the money for the weed, and what looked like pills of some sort, scattered across the coffee table, but not the money to cover her half of the internet bill last month. Nor had she paid Darcy back for covering her, not that she was keeping tab or anything. She was not doing this tonight; this was not a conversation she wanted to have in her current state of exhaustion.

Brigid just giggled at whatever was happening on the program, a glazed look on her face. Kyle leered at her, honing in on the way her arm full of supplies pushed her breasts up, accentuating her already ample assets.

“You want any... _help_ with that stuff, Darcy?” he asked in a singsong tone, winking one blood-shot eye and speaking directly to her boobs.

“No, nope. I'm good. Have a great night guys,” she threw over her shoulder while making a beeline for her bedroom door. Thank god they each had their own bathroom, a minor miracle for an apartment in one of these old buildings. She probably wouldn't have to leave again until tomorrow afternoon, when her next shift started at the diner. Darcy dropped everything in her arms on the unmade bed, pushing the pile of clean laundry she'd left there onto the clothes-strewn floor. She'd sort out that mess later. For now, she threw herself onto the bed, buried her face in her pillow, and let out a long, frustrated groan.

Rolling over, she checked her phone. Two missed calls from a Deerfield, Illinois number. Dad doing his weekly check-in. He still called her from pay phones, because Colonel Luke Lewis was that kind of man. And like everything in her father's regimented lifestyle, communications with his daughter happened on a regular and appointed basis. If she missed his call, she probably wouldn't hear from him again until next Thursday. Most of the time he was so consumed with the responsibilities that came with his position as base commander over at Fort Dearborn that he rarely answered if she tried to call out of the blue. Dear old pop, she thought sardonically.

Well, Thursday Worst Day was behind her. She had enough food to camp out for the rest of the night, she had Netflix, she had a late start tomorrow. Opening up her laptop on top of her stomach while digging her spoon deep into the carton of Chunky Monkey, she figured... Nowhere to go but up, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **jasper: man; handsome fellow**  
>   
> 
> If you want to improve your day by 1000%, take three minutes and enjoy this delicious slice of eighties [nonsense](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReacTOXGgHE&ab_channel=ThompsonTwinsVEVO).


	2. high pillow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I look inside myself and see my heart is black | I see my red door I must have it painted black"
> 
>    
> The Rolling Stones, _Paint It Black_

The next day, Friday, Darcy slept until the decadent hour of eleven. When she peeked out of her bedroom, there was no sign of Brigid or Kyle so she rushed to the kitchenette with an armful of dirty dishes. She washed them as stealthily as she could, then set them on the drying rack. She ducked back into her room, grabbing her jacket and throwing her uniform into her bag, before sprinting for the door.

The weekend passed quickly; she pulled the lunch rush on Friday, then two doubles on Saturday and Sunday and raked in the tips as a result. By the time Monday, her weekly day off, rolled around, Darcy could barely be bothered to get out of bed. She finally roused herself sometime around two pm when her stomach started growling aggressively and she realized her skin still smelled like hot grease. She showered and dressed, tucking her wet hair into one of her many beanies and shoving her glasses onto her face because days off were not meant to be wasted on putting in contact lenses. She was surprised that she still hadn't caught Brigid in the living room, and knocked timidly on the girl's bedroom door. She was hoping for no response since it was as likely to come from Kyle as Brigid, and while she may have felt slightly ashamed of her relief when she was met with only silence, she was pretty sure that falafel could cure that.

+

Bucky had been working hard in the two months since Steve had brought him in from the cold. He'd been living in the tower, keeping out of trouble. Talking with a shrink, dealing with his trauma, training daily. The two-pronged approach, Sam had called it. Get your mind right, get your body right.

He'd been behaving himself.

He was a little bored.

Boring was good though, that's what his head doctor said. Healthy.

But if boring was good, what did that make the sultry brunette with the cleavage? His Girl Thursday, as he'd started thinking of her.

The one whose big blue eyes he could feel on his back in the elevator the other day. The one who, judging by that pretty pink blush she'd sported when he'd called her out, was maybe a little interested herself. She was undeniably not boring. Did that mean she was no good for him?

He was determined to solve this riddle, which was why he was currently slinking through the dark hallway of floor thirty-one, shortly after two am, carrying the Starkphone that Steve had shoved into his hand after he'd borrowed one of Stark's bikes a few too many times.

“At least take the phone with you if you insist on doing that, Buck,” Steve had sighed. “I wish you'd just tell me where you're going and when, but these things aren't all bad. They're good for emergencies, which you might have some day, pal, if you keep riding Stark's Ducati 1098 around Manhattan in the middle of the night.”

“You really think I just stick to Manhattan?" he'd wondered.

Steve had huffed with exasperation at that, pointed to the phone with his sternest Captain America face, and added, “He's docking the cost of the missing gas and maintenance from your army backpay checks, by the way. Just to spite you.”

“Better than still wanting to kill me, don't you think? I'd say we're making progress,” had been Bucky's dry response.

He grinned absently to himself while remembering the exchange, and shined the phone's light on the plaque attached to the door in front of him. The antiseptic smell of the hallway suggested that this floor was home to laboratories, and he verified his theory upon reading the sign: “Dr. Bruce Banner.” He shuddered, not wanting to think about what that dope was getting up to, and moved on.

The next door read: “Dr. Jane Foster.” That was interesting. Where had he heard that name? He made a mental note of it, resolving to get Natalia's take on all this. When in doubt, he reflected, always ask Natalia.

+

Tuesday had brought Darcy back to the Avengers building bright and early, and although she'd tried to convince herself she wasn't expecting to see him, she'd still felt disappointment sink in when she'd reached floor thirty-one without any encounters of the hot dude variety. She'd gotten through her filing and typing for Jane pretty quickly and after running out to grab some lunch for them to share, which she'd convinced Jane to eat by stealing the laptop out from under her still-typing fingers, Darcy had waved goodbye to her boss and made her way down the hall towards the elevator. When she stepped inside, she peered down at the buttons for a moment. She felt a rush of nervous suspense; she tried not to think about how terribly this decision was going shake out. And then she pressed seventy-seven.

She didn't know exactly what she was expecting, but when the elevator doors opened into an airy, two-story tall gymnasium that encompassed the entire width of the building, she could honestly say it hadn't been that. The room was littered with all the possible equipment one might need while learning to kick someone's ass. There was a pause, while the doors remained open, during which she made direct, prolonged eye contact with the Winter Soldier and a beautiful red-headed woman, who had halted mid-step in the graceful dance of muay thai they'd been practicing together to stare at her curiously.

There was just enough time for her to blurt out, face aflame, “Whoops!”, which, thanks to the talented engineers of Stark Industries, echoed throughout the cavernous, mat-covered room. Then the doors closed in front of her and the elevator was called away, descending to the lobby.

+

Hugh Jones III was not a happy man. He was sweating like a pig, and he stank like one too. He rose from the beautiful leather chair behind his imposing ebony desk, where he'd been staring at the beginnings of the late October sunset and considering his options. Not happy at all. He moved across the tasteful, masculine office to the wardrobe tucked in the opposite corner. He pulled off his jacket, and then his sweat-stained Armani dress shirt, crumpling it up and tossing it carelessly into the nearby trash can. Opening the wardrobe's door, he pulled out one of several pressed duplicates he had hanging inside. As he applied more of the deodorant that was neatly arranged, with other toiletries, on one of the shelves, he thought about her. That stupid little junkie. She was the root of all this sweating and anxiety. He pulled on the new shirt, dropped his loosened tie back over his head and pulled it tight around his neck. Like his grandfather had shown him. A real man is never seen without his jacket or his tie while he's working, that's what the original Hugh had always said.

He shoved his beefy arms back into the sleeves of his suit, then looked down at the busy streets below. Sheep, blithely coming and going. Not a clue about the kind of miracles and disasters big-wigs like Hugh orchestrated every day. They were lucky, in some ways. They were also fucked.

Because let's face it, anyone who didn't have the kind of numbers in their bank account that he did was fucked, right? He checked his reflection in the small mirror hanging inside the door, running a comb through his thick grey hair. He still had it. That little floozy thought she could run circles around him, but this wasn't over.

Yeah, she pissed off the wrong guy alright. He was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, for fuck's sake. And that was just what Roxxon Oil & Energy was making _on_ the books. The shit they were developing down in the basement, well... that was going to be pretty wild, the day they unveiled some of those little numbers.

There was a quiet knock on the door, and Hugh closed the wardrobe before crossing to his favorite spot in front of the window. He clasped his hands behind his back, adopted his signature power stance, and shouted, “Enter!”

Two hulking, musclebound men eased through the doorway and into the dark room. Hugh didn't turn to look at them; that's not how alphas ran their meetings. And Hugh was alpha as fuck. “What did you find?” he growled at them.

“Sorry boss, we've checked with her... employers, and we turned over her apartment... No sign of her. We're shaking down any associates we can find but it looks like she might've skipped town,” answered one of the goons, looking to the other goon for support while giving his report. His partner shook his head almost imperceptibly in response; it was every goon for himself when it came to delivering bad news to Hugh Jones III.

“Family?” Hugh's voice deepened, got gruffer as he became angrier.

“Uh, mom in Seattle. You want us to send someone out there?” said the unfortunate goon. God damn the choosing-straws method, he thought, and my terrible fucking luck.

“No, numbnuts, I want you sit around the company my fucking grandfather built from the ground up with your thumb up your ass while that little bitch tries to fuck us all over!” Hugh was bellowing now, he'd turned so that he could fully scream at the men and he was a livid shade of puce. His tie was pulled so tight, his face was such an angry color, that the unfortunate goon wondered if the boss wasn't about to keel over from a heart attack and let him off the hook for this whole mess.

“Yes sir,” he answered quietly, turning to leave the office.

“Hey, dipshit!” Hugh roared after him. The goon spun back towards him, tucking his hands in his pockets to hide the tremor that his spike of fear had caused.

“You go, do this one yourself. Come back with the girl... or it'll be your family I'm sending someone to visit next,” Hugh spat out, before he wordlessly dismissed both of them by shifting back to watch the florid, blood-red sky sink into darkness.

+

In hindsight, Darcy would be ashamed of how long it took her to realize something was wrong. She could blame it on work, she could blame it on her never-ending humiliation over her "Whoops!" moment (which played like a broken record in her mind at all hours over the next couple days), she could blame it on PMS-induced crankiness or her strained relationship with her roommate, but the fact remained: it had taken Darcy a week to realize Brigid was missing.

What a self-absorbed asshole I am, she would think later. My father's daughter, through and through. 

That wasn't the worst of it.

The worst of it was that she hadn't even realized it on her own. She was on her way home from Thursday Worst Day, a week after her first elevator encounter with Barnes. Her eyes were trained on her phone as she trailed down the hallway towards her apartment, and she almost toppled over Kyle, who was sitting with his back against her front door. He looked up at her with the closest thing to human emotion she'd ever seen Kyle produce. He looked wretched, washed out with dark shadows under his eyes.

“What'd I do, Darcy?” he whined, when their eyes met.

“Huh? Dude, I'm tired and I don't need-”

“She won't answer my phone calls or texts! Her phone's fucking disconnected, man. Nobody's seen her, I asked everyone. All our friends. I even asked her asshole boss. She's just gone! She said she loved me, dude. I was gonna marry her. I got her name tattooed on my ass.”

Darcy bit back her criticism of that particular life choice, and decided not to remind him of the multiple times he'd been a total lech towards her while Brigid was right there, pretending not to notice. Instead, she asked, “So... what'd you do?”

“I don't fucking know! This isn't like her. Not even when we dipped into the hard stuff man, she never flaked like this. I'm... I'm scared Darcy. What if she's cheating on me?”

She sneered at him, and proposed, “I don't know, maybe she has a chance of actually having a decent life?” At that he popped up, towering over her and getting so close his chest bumped into her arm.

“Screw you, D. Just 'cause you haven't gotten laid in like six mon-”

“Take one step closer to me, I dare you. I will tase the ever-loving shit out of you,” Darcy breathed, keeping both eyes on him as she smoothly unzipped her backpack and pulled the taser out of the hidden bottom compartment.

“Dude, just let me in already, c'mon,” Kyle switched gears, backing up and donning a piteous, hangdog expression once more. “Let me talk to her.”

Darcy did not lower the taser as she unlocked the door and walked backwards into the apartment, but kept it aimed at Kyle's throat. “I'm not stopping you. But I'm not putting this away, either. If she wants you to go, you're leaving. On your feet or when the police carry your stupid, unconscious ass out. And if she wants to talk to you... then you two deserve each other,” she ground out. She backed into the apartment and Kyle followed, closing the door behind him. She backed up until she hit the couch, then opened Brigid's bedroom door, directly to her right, never taking her eyes off him. Kyle walked towards her with his hands raised, and when he reached the doorway they turned together to look into the room.

Darcy gasped, and suddenly there was a high-pitched ringing in her ears that was drowning out Kyle's anguished moans.

Brigid's room was in ruins. They were both pretty messy people, which had actually been something they'd bonded over early on in their living arrangement. They'd agreed not to leave any of their stuff in the shared living space, which was probably why on any given day it was a pretty safe bet that either woman's bedroom looked like a tornado hit it.

But this... this was beyond that. Everything was destroyed. There were large, gaping holes in the drywall, most of which hung from the timber behind it limply. Brigid had never bothered with a bed frame but her mattress, stripped of the linens, was shredded into a gnarled mass of springs and cotton fluff. The room's entire wall-to-wall carpeting had been torn away from the floor, and the jagged remains of it were piled up in one corner. The drawers of her simple dresser laid splintered on the ground, as though someone had chopped them apart with an ax. Their contents had been flung everywhere. Every item in Brigid's closet had been thrown into a giant heap in the center of the room. But what really sent them both reeling, the strangest detail of the whole scene, was that every picture on the wall, every piece of identification that had laid on top the dresser, every shred of evidence that Darcy's bottle-blond waif of a roommate had ever possessed a face or a name, was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **high pillow: person at the top, in charge**  
> 
> I've always had mixed feelings about this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wCUlPNlQuA&ab_channel=agustinvides)... I love it because it rocks, but its message is really dark. So... perfect for noir, eh?


	3. flame-top

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Why you try to put up a front for me | I'm a spy but on your side, you see | Slip on into any disguise | I'll still know you"
> 
> Hall & Oates, _Private Eye_

“Hey, you remember that girl from the elevator?” Bucky was trying to ease this segue into a natural lull in the debate they'd been having over gun cleaning products while strolling through Central Park. Unfortunately for him, Natasha spotted it from a mile away; her cupid's bow lips twisted into a smirk and her eyes flashed with amusement.

“Whoops?” she asked, the smirk deepening into an actual grin as she leaned against the fence where they'd stopped walking.

“Ha ha, Natalia. Who is she? How'd she get access to floor seventy-seven?”

“Either she has high enough clearance, which... I doubt, based on her wardrobe choices, or Jarvis is playing match-maker again,” she teased.

“Come on, seriously,” he implored, joining her against the fence.

“Not a joke,” she replied, sobering and looking him in the eye, “Back before Bruce and I got serious? Jarvis used to sometimes take me to the floor he was on regardless of whatever button I pressed. And he'd keep the floor numbers moving along on the screen normally, so I never knew it was happening. I think Tony may have actually used a strand of his own DNA to build that thing. Robots aren't supposed to troll like that.”

Bucky looked out across the large reservoir, wherein several families of ducks languidly orbited two fountains. The ducklings swam in neat trails behind their parents. Runners, joggers, and dog-walkers passed along the path behind them. He waited for a pause in the foot traffic, and when they were alone once more, he said quietly, “Help me with this, Nat. I think she has something to do with the scientists, maybe Jane Foster. I just... I want to get something right for once in my miserable life.”

She didn't look away from the ducks for a long time, and when she did he was staring down into the coffee in his paper cup. She exhaled, nodded with determination, and took a sip of her pumpkin spice latte.

“Okay, Barnes,” she answered, the corner of her mouth lifting crookedly when his eyes lit up. “I'll scope her out for you.”

+

Kyle had dropped to his knees and was rocking himself gently. Darcy pivoted on her heel and crossed the apartment to her own room. It had been ransacked as well, although not as aggressively. Her stuff had been thrown everywhere and there were one or two holes in the wall where posters had been hanging, but Darcy didn't immediately notice anything important or valuable missing and guessed that on the whole she'd gotten the better end of the deal.

She came back to the living room, staring off into space in bewilderment for a minute, then two. Finally, she shook herself from her daze and kicked Kyle in the thigh. “Okay, party's over, jackass. Get out, I'm calling the police.”

“No! You can't do that Darcy, we can't get police involved in this,” Kyle blubbered, snot running down his face and clinging to the pathetic attempt at a beard he'd been growing.

“Explain,” she replied through gritted teeth.

“We... fuck. You know what Brigid's been doing, right? Where she's been working? And we've both been dealing, too! No police man, we can figure this out. You're smart, you like, went to college and shit. Just figure this out, Darcy!” Kyle was rambling now, still rocking and hugging his legs with his arms.

“Okay, several things. First, not that it's any of your business, dirtbag, but I never graduated from college which is basically the same as not going as far as anyone is concerned. And I _am_ smart but I'm not like... I mean, I wouldn't even know where to begin... No. We're calling the police. And what the fuck do you mean, where she's been working? She works for that accounting firm over in Chinatown,” Darcy answered, backing up and watching Kyle warily.

He rose to his feet, looked around furtively, then moved to the couch and sank down. He pulled a joint from behind his ear and before Darcy could stop him, procured a colorful plastic lighter from his pocket and lit it up. He took a deep drag, then offered it to her. She shook her head, scowling at him, and remained standing tensely in the center of the room with her finger resting on the trigger of her taser.

Kyle sighed. “Nah man, things got a little heavy there for a while. She hated that job anyway, and I've got some friends, they do the escort thing for this company in SoHo. I hooked her up with them,” he looked up from his joint to assess her reaction, saw her rising choler, and added, “It wasn't like a sex thing. Like that thing where you go to parties with rich dudes because you're a hot girl and they want to look, I dunno, cool or powerful or whatever. She dealt to some of them on the side, but that was hush hush, the company didn't know. That's all.”

Darcy rubbed the bridge of her nose and groaned deeply. She pointed the taser at him again. “Either you are a goddamn monster and a terrific liar, or... you honestly think that's all that happens with those kinds of jobs, and you are literally the dumbest motherfucker on the planet. Either way, you sold my roommate out, and judging by the state of her room neither one of us has any idea what the hell she's been getting into. Tell me _exactly_ the last time you saw her.”

“Friday morning, we waked and baked, she gave me a blow-”

“Stop. Just stop. I hate you so, so much. Just... gross,” Darcy groaned again. “When did you split up?”

“That afternoon. Around, I dunno, one or so. She went bowling and then had work after and I went back to my place,” Kyle sniffed.

“Are there, like, any other shocking revelations you'd like to reveal?” Darcy snapped back.

“I dunno dude, I thought you guys were best friends,” he answered in a sullen murmur.

“Ding ding! Dumbest motherfucker on the planet award goes to you. Congratulations. Now... get out of my apartment,” she pointed her taser at the door.

“What're we gonna do, though?” he sniveled.

“We? _WE?_ Uh uh, hell to the N-O. There is no _we_ here, Kyle. You're a creep. You get out of my apartment and go ruin someone else's life. I'm gonna figure this out, I don't know how. But I will. And you're gonna pray that I never see you again, because if I do...” She paused. Kyle had stopped halfway through the doorway and turned back to her, blinking petulantly.

“This thing discharges fifty thousand volts and I'm just dying to use it on you,” she finished, narrowing her eyes at him and smiling triumphantly when he scurried the rest of the way out, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

+

"You have reached the voice mailbox of... _Colonel Lucas Lewis_... at the tone, please record your voice message. When you have finished recording you may hang up, or press..." She should've known he wouldn't pick up. She did know. She'd just hoped that by some sort of fateful alchemy he'd realize she needed advice and choose this precise moment to change everything about himself. Oh, well. Maybe next Thursday he'd actually call during a time when she was not working, like she'd repeatedly asked him to. Probably not.

The police had come quickly after she'd called them last night, taking photos and a few pieces of evidence plus her official witness statement. And yet, there had been something about their reaction when she'd told them her roommate's name was Brigid O'Malley that did not sit right with her. In every other respect they'd appeared to take the case seriously, telling her they'd open a missing persons case on Brigid, but there'd been a moment when the two officers who had come to her apartment had shared a glance and thenone speaking to her had relaxed ever so slightly, that she did not like.

They'd told her they'd talk to Kyle as well, although she had no idea where he lived or how to reach him. They'd told her not to worry about it, that they'd handle it from here.

That made her worry even more.

Sam Spade wouldn't let the police just “take it from here”, she thought to herself as she stuffed her cotton-candy pink uniform in her backpack while cradling the phone between one ear and her shoulder. The robotic voice of her dad's voicemail kicked in for the third time and she huffed in disgust, hanging up and throwing her phone in the bag.

After the cops had left, she'd spent hours combing through her roommate's Facebook page, her Instagram, and her twitter accounts. Brigid wasn't a very active user, but Darcy was more focused on scanning the comments for anything out of the ordinary. She hadn't found anything. She'd spent another hour or so putting her room back together and she could say with a pretty strong degree of certainty that nothing was missing.

Which she found bizarre. Kyle had told her that he and Brigid dealt... whatever... but surely if they were such big operators, her room would've been a target as well? And wouldn't she have noticed something, if they had been seriously dealing? Brigid never seemed particularly secretive about her space, she'd never locked her room or told Darcy not to enter it. If she'd been dealing, somehow she'd managed to keep it a complete secret from Darcy. It just didn't seem like Brigid. Then again, maybe she didn't know what was "like" Brigid at all. She hadn't known about her new job, had she? But what, if not drugs or money, had the burglars been looking for, besides pictures of her roommate? Admittedly, Darcy didn't know the contents of the girl's room well enough to know exactly what was missing. But the complete removal of the girl's image, in a room that had once been full of pictures stuffed into cutesy, pinterest-friendly frames, seemed like a flashing red light to Darcy. The total destruction of it was haunting her. She just couldn't figure out what it was all pointing towards.

Checking the clock on the cable box, she realized that if she didn't hustle she was going to be late for work, so she drained her morning coffee, tossed the mug in the sink and grabbed her stuff before hurrying out the door.

+

She was halfway through her shift, some time around four pm, when she noticed the red-headed woman. Sitting in the booth all the way at the back of the diner, next to the rest rooms. She'd chosen the side that faced the entrance, but had pushed her body into the corner so that she could survey anyone exiting the kitchen doors from behind her, leaving no opening for surprises. Once Darcy really looked at her, she recognized her immediately. The Black Widow. Natasha Romanoff. Sergeant Barnes'... Fighting partner. Girlfriend, maybe. Wife? Who could say. She couldn't believe she hadn't realized who she was the other day. Must've been the raging mortification, she decided. Darcy shied away from the table for a few minutes, topping up coffees and checking on all of her other customers. She knew she'd have to go speak to her eventually though; Natasha was sitting in her section. She wondered if she'd done it on purpose. Or maybe this whole thing was some kind of crazy coincidence, she thought hopefully.

Sure she had something to do with Barnes, probably worked in the Avengers tower. But it was possible she lived out here in Queens, right? That she really liked greasy, overcooked burgers and comically bland soup? Darcy braced herself and approached the table.

“Hi, welcome to Black Cat Diner, I'm-”

“Hello, Darcy,” Natasha said, her voice a raspy purr. “I'm not here to eat but I don't want to get you in trouble, so how about a cup of coffee and a few minutes of your time?”

Darcy recoiled, taking a full step back from the woman and frowning. She muttered urgently, “How do you know my name?”

Natasha tilted her head, and her sanguine expression made Darcy feel even more unsettled. “You know who I am?" Darcy nodded. "Then you know how I know you. I'm not your enemy, I promise. Possibly your friend. Do you have a break coming up?” She continued watching Darcy calmly.

“I've got a smoke break in a half an hour,” she said under her breath.

“Perfect. I'll take some of that Black Cat coffee all the Yelp reviews complain about, and I'll meet you around back of the restaurant in thirty minutes.” She smiled faintly, and blinked at Darcy while she waited for her to catch up.

Darcy nodded shakily, leaving the table. What fresh hell was this?

+

Thirty minutes later, she was no closer to feeling prepared for whatever discussion Natasha wanted to have with her. It was a good time to take her break though, the last of the lunch crowd had paid and left and there were just a few stragglers which she knew Annette, the fifty something waitress who'd been there since the place had opened in the eighties, could handle. So she waved at Annette, mimed taking a puff of a cigarette, and ducked out through the kitchen into the alley behind the diner.

Natasha was already there, leaning with one leg bent, foot resting against the brick wall. The collar of her waist-length, black leather coat had been pulled up, her hands were dug into the pockets of her dark jeans, and she was wearing a pair of black Ray-Bans. Darcy didn't even remember seeing her leave, she'd turned her back for one minute and when she'd checked the table next there was just some cash for the coffee and her tip. She willed away the tendrils of envy and admiration that danced around inside her; Natasha looked like a greaser's dangerous girlfriend. Darcy was wearing... her bright, polyester uniform (a retro shirt-dress was slightly too big on her) and a pair of hideously sensible running sneakers. Woof.

She smiled at Darcy, and pulled off the sunglasses.

“Tell me about what you do for Jane Foster?” She prompted.

“Can't you just look it up, like how you found my name?” Darcy asked with a slightly annoyed air.

“Sure,” Natasha shrugged, “But I didn't.”

Darcy sighed, and parked herself on one of the unused crates lying around. Natasha dragged another one over and perched on it beside her. “I took an internship with her when I was still in college. My dad was convinced I should be, like, a senator or whatever and he said he'd use his army benefits to pay for my tuition if I enrolled as a polisci major, so I did. But I wasn't into it at all so when the summer rolled around I applied to work with her because spending the summer star-gazing in the desert sounded rad. Some stuff went down...”

“Thor,” Natasha added quietly.

“Uh, yeah. You heard about that? Wait, of course you did. Sorry. Anyway, so... yeah. After that Stark offered Jane a lab and a research budget she would've been crazy to turn down and I just... trailed along, I guess,” Darcy picked at a hangnail, feeling lame. “Doesn't really compare to being, like, an international lady spy. And it doesn't pay or anything, that's why I got this job. I guess I just felt, I didn't have a particular direction I was headed anyway, you know? Might as well come live in the Big Apple, keep helping Jane. Not that she even notices.”

Natasha snorted delicately. “I think I understand. I have some experience of my own, trying to get through to a brainiac science type.” Darcy's brow furrowed, confused. “Doctor Bruce Banner, my... partner.”

The way she said it, hesitating while she grasped for the correct word, made Darcy think it might be a recent development. She smiled wryly, and murmured, “Scientists. Can't live with 'em, can't...”

“Leave them to their own devices?” Natasha finished, smiling back. Darcy laughed, and relaxed slightly.

“Can I... sorry, I just. I thought maybe you and Barnes were...” she trailed off, not sure how to ask the intimidating woman such a personal question.

“Together?”

Darcy nodded mutely, and Natasha sighed. “It's not like that. We are a sort of... a support group, for each other. A survivor's club. You've seen the news, the information from the leak? You know what HYDRA is?” She peered into Darcy's eyes, waiting to make sure the other women understood what she was referring to before continuing, “They used us, Barnes and me. It's complicated. I don't want to tell you a story that's not mine to tell, but... sometimes it helps to talk to someone who understands what you've lived through.”

Darcy had silently returned to picking at her nail, and nodded down at her hands in response. Natasha leaned over, and nudged her shoulder against the younger woman's. “I'm not here for my own health, you know. Barnes is a good guy, and you... well, he likes you. He doesn't know you, obviously, but he likes you. Go easy on him, huh?” At this Darcy's head shot back up and her mouth fell open as she stared into Natasha's sparkling green eyes with shock.

“Me? Wait, what? I've never even talked to him!” she sputtered. Natasha laughed out loud at her response, and shook her head before rising.

“Oh, this is rich,” she simpered, the earnestness of the moment having passed and her cool facade sliding back in place, “You didn't know he was interested? Perfect. Classic Barnes. Well, you get the Romanov seal of approval from me, Darcy Lewis. Don't fuck it up with him, okay? Consider that my... friendly warning. Between us girls.”

Darcy shrugged, trying for unaffected. She stood as well, and waved back at Natasha as the red-head nodded, donned her shades once more and turned, exiting the alley.

“Well, that was... interesting,” she whispered, to herself and to Bob the alley cat, whose contemptuous gaze offered no sympathy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **flame-top: red-headed woman**  
>   
> 
> Another precious eighties [gem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsntlJZ9h1U&ab_channel=hallandoatesVEVO). What part of this video do I love more, John Oates dancing with a magnifying glass or the pianist trying to make standing at a keyboard look cool? Who even cares, this video is perfect.


	4. keyhole peeper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Wild card up my sleeve | Thick heart of stone | My sins my own | They belong to me, me"
> 
> Patti Smith, _Gloria_

Jessica Jones was about a third of the way through a bottle of Jack Daniels, and feeling good. A small circle of light emanated from the single lamp on her otherwise unadorned desk, atop which her long legs were crossed and her heavy, boot-shod feet rested. She was flicking through the pictures she'd taken last night on her laptop. They were all passably decent but, feeling lucky, she was searching for one clear shot of this idiot and her side piece that she could take to the client. One good photo meant less printing, and less time interacting with the techies at the office center down the block.

Less interaction time was always worth a little extra digging.

She pulled the bottle towards her by its neck, lifting it to her lips and taking a healthy swig. “Gotcha,” she murmured smugly at the photo on her screen: a laughably incriminating moment between her client's wife and a handsome, almost pretty, younger man was reflected in her dark eyes. She leaned back, admiring her handiwork, and took another sip. The husband was some fancy wall street banker, which meant that Jessica Jones was getting paid. And that meant more booze. She should celebrate. Maybe at the bar.

Just as she was internally debating the merits of drinking alone at the dive down the street versus drinking alone in her apartment, there was a knock at the door.

“No!” she shouted in its general direction. This paycheck would keep her rent paid and her liquor stocked for at least a month, possibly two, and Jessica planned to spend that time brooding over the trauma of Kilgrave's return and demise. Without interruption. Alone.

“Uh, hello? Is this the office of Alias Investigations?” came a muffled voice through the cardboard-filled hole in her door where there had once been a frosted window. Shit. She'd bought a marker two days ago and had meant to write the name of her agency on the makeshift office entrance. Oh well. She'd worry about that... next month.

“No!” she called out, plugging her pen drive into the USB port on her laptop and exporting the money shot.

“Okay, sorry,” the voice answered. Silence followed, but the whiskey was really greasing the wheels in her brain tonight, so Jessica leaned as far back as her seat would allow to peek around the desk and check the light filtering in under her door from the hallway. There were two noticeable breaks in the rays that splashed across her hardwood floor.

“Shit,” she grumbled, before pushing herself up and off the chair and ambling over to the door. She yanked it open harder than she'd meant to, and the short, curvy brunette who'd been typing something into her phone startled, looking up at Jessica with alarm.

She was pretty in an old Hollywood sort of way. Big lips, big blue eyes, little waist, big tits. Her hips swelled to give her an hourglass figure, her crimson lipstick was applied flawlessly and the long chocolate strands of her wavy hair framed her heart-shaped face flatteringly. Jessica decided she looked kind of... soft. And the pea green beanie is hideous, she thought spitefully. “What do you want,” she spit out.

“Sorry, I'm just looking for this private investigator. Do you know if she's in the building? Jessica Jones,” the woman answered in a warm, husky voice.

“You got a cheating spouse or something?” She leaned on the jamb and peered over the petite woman's shoulder to glimpse at the screen of her phone. Nothing salacious, just Jessica's business address and under it, a map of midtown Manhattan. Her eyes flicked back up to the woman. “Well?” The girl was chewing her lip, her eyes darting between Jessica's face and the phone.

“I'm not in the wrong place, am I?” she finally asked.

Jessica sighed, her lip curled, and she pushed her lanky frame out of the doorway, shoving the door back in the process. She swung her arm into the dark apartment behind her with exaggerated grandeur, growling, “You got five minutes.”

The girl's eyebrows drew down and she blinked in confusion before taking the invitation and stepping into the apartment. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets and peered around at the blank walls, the empty shelves, the lack of extraneous furniture or decoration, then accepted the offered seat when Jessica pointed at the folding chair in front of her desk while circling it to return to her own chair.

“My roommate went missing about a week and a half ago,” she started, “Um, eleven days ago. And the police aren't... I just don't think they're taking it seriously. But it is serious, crazy serious. You should see the state of her room! Somebody broke into our apartment, they shattered one of the windows in her bedroom. They ransacked the place.”

Jessica's eyebrows lifted slightly, before she grabbed the bottle and took another swallow. “Welcome to fucking New York, honey. Sucks about your friend but... shit happens.”

“No, but this is weird. They took all of her ID's, every picture of her, but they left a giant pile of all her stuff and when I went through it, her camera was still there. So were a pair of mint condition Louis Vuitton's, still in the box, and what had to be like, sixteen ounces of weed. What the hell kind of burglary is that? There's more, too-”

“Look, uh, whoever you are-”

“Darcy. My name's Darcy Lewis.”

“That's nice. This girl was living with a roommate in, uh-”

“Queens. Long Island City.”

“Sure. Shitty neighborhood, roommate, and she had that much pot and brand new expensive shoes? Yeah. Sorry, but your friend's either a bored little rich girl who's slumming, involved in something illegal or she's got a sugar daddy. My advice? Let it go. Put an ad up on Craigslist, move on with your life.” Her voice had a ring of finality, and she tipped the bottle towards Darcy in a toast before swilling down another mouthful.

The girl had a desperate look on her face, and she dragged the chair forward so that she could lean up onto the desk. “They tore the walls down to the studs, Miss Jones. They shredded her mattress. They took her phone and the memory card in her camera but left the damn camera behind. You don't think that's crazy?”

Jessica assessed her for a moment, her eyes flicking to the image still displayed on her computer screen. “What's she do?”

“Okay, here's where it gets even crazier. I thought she was working for an accounting firm in Chinatown but her disgusting boyfriend told me, after she was missing for a week, that she quit months ago and has been working for some escort service in SoHo. What the hell!”

“Got a name?”

“Yeah, Kyle, he's the wors-”

“The escort company.” Jessica rolled her eyes.

“Oh. Uh, I don't know. He didn't mention it. Why, are there a lot of them?” Jessica just raised her eyebrow, and pushed herself up again. She disappeared into the inky darkness of the inner apartment and for one terrible moment, Darcy thought she'd been dismissed. But a refrigerator appeared as the tall, lean woman pulled open the door and bent down to retrieve something, then shut the door, taking all light from the room with it. When Jessica shuffled into view again, she was holding a tall can of beer. She pushed in the tab, drained about half of it, and then plopped back in her chair with a sigh.

“Yeah,” she said at last, in a dry tone that told Darcy exactly how stupid she thought the question was, “There are a lot of them.”

Darcy shifted nervously. “I guess that's why you're the private eye.”

Jessica barked out a sarcastic laugh, took another long pull of her beer, then heaved her boots back up onto the desk. “Your five minutes are up. I can't help you, sorry. The door's that way.” She was pointing her fingerless glove-clad hand towards the ramshackle entrance. Darcy rose, glowering at the raven haired woman in front of her, and turned to leave.

Just as she reached the door, she paused, screwing up her shoulders and turning. “Her name's Brigid O'Malley. She loves bowling and sushi. Her mom lives in Seattle. She has a half-sister named Madeleine, who's in kindergarten. She's not my best friend in the whole world or anything but she's a real person and I don't know what the hell's happened to her. I think it might be something bad but I'm not a damn detective and I don't know where to begin figuring this whole thing out. So you could at least point me in the right direction, if you're not gonna help me.”

Jessica didn't respond to the diatribe; she simply closed her eyes and tilted her head back against her chair. There was one fraught, tense moment where neither woman in the dark room moved, then she heard Darcy heave a sigh, open the door, and she was gone. Not my problem, Jessica thought. I don't have any problems for the next month. Even as the denial formed in her mind, she knew she was lying to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **keyhole peeper: detective/private dick/PI/etc.**  
>   
> 
> Now that's how you start a [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E2MyRsApm0&ab_channel=DeukhyungCho%0A).


	5. pitching woo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hanging in the doorway | Like smoke, like mistletoe | This is where I'll be | Whenever you come or go"
> 
> Ani Difranco, _Circle of Light_

She was lovely, even in her preposterous vintage getup, even with her hair pulled back in a thick, messy braid that fell down her back. Leaning in the shadow of a maple tree across the street from the Black Cat Diner, Bucky wanted to ridicule that uniform and how inappropriate it would've actually been in the 40's. But he couldn't deny that the sight of her in a style even vaguely reminiscent of his heyday was doing a number on him. As though just the shape of her didn't do enough already, he scoffed. He checked his watch; it was just past one am. The diner was empty and she was cleaning the machinery behind the counter.

It was all a risk. That's the conclusion he'd come to, after mulling over Natalia's account of her conversation with this Darcy Lewis dame. It was a risk if he went in there and talked to her, if he tried to start something with her. He could not, in good faith, promise anyone that he was completely sound of mind and body. Therapy had been helping though, releasing the power of the HYDRA-programmed trigger words and beginning to heal his fractured psyche. He wasn't the basket-case he'd been a year ago. He remembered most of his past nowadays, which had made it easier on the day that Stark, wearing the Iron Man suit, had tracked him down in the gym and wailed on him for two hours, until he was little more than a bloody lump of flesh being thrown around the room. Stark had told him then, as he lay gasping, both eyes swollen shut, that he knew what Bucky had done to his parents. They hadn't spoken for a while after that, although Stevie must've plead his case because he hadn't gotten the boot from the tower either. They'd come to a fragile detente in the last few weeks, after he'd pitched in to help deal with that nutjob, the Mandarin.

But it was still a risk to go in there and try to make time with this pretty, tongue-tied girl that he couldn't stop thinking about. Bucky knew, however, not doing this was a risk as well. He didn't want to live the rest of his life as a fighting machine; he didn't want his day-to-day to be a joyless grind, like Steve's. He'd been alone for a long time, and he'd had his fill of casual trim since he shook HYDRA and joined up with the Avengers crew. But he wanted to have something he cherished, something worth fighting to protect. He wanted it all to have some damn meaning.

She had paused in her ministrations, and was leaning on the mint-green counter in front of her, sipping at a cup of coffee. Bucky started ever so slightly when it looked like she was staring directly at him but she just sighed, leaned her head on her hand, and pulled a book out. Bucky glanced at the glowing neon cat sign hanging above the entrance. This place was open all night, and they let women work up front with no one to keep an eye out for any wrong numbers looking to make waves?

He shook his head as if to dispel the thought. He'd been over this with Natalia. That's not how the world worked anymore, she'd told him. Women come and go as they please, and some liberal-minded people even trust them to take care of things like capable human adults. She'd been extremely sarcastic in answering his questions that day, and the conversation had devolved into something of an argument when he'd tried to insist that the values he'd grown up with weren't totally without merit. Natalia had... not agreed. In the end, he'd had to concede that she was probably right. What good had shoving women out of sight, taking away their autonomy ever done for the world? Not much that he could remember from his era, and not much that he could see here in the twenty-first century.

What he could see, however, was that Darcy had become completely engrossed in whatever she was reading. The front cover of the book lay flat on the counter and he couldn't make out the title but he found himself itching to know.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he thought, pushing off the tree and crossing the street. He winced when the bell over the door alerted her the minute he'd stepped into the joint, but he liked the way her eyes widened with astonishment at his presence. He took his time strutting down the aisle between the row of booths lining the window and the counter, before stopping and seating himself at a stool directly in front of her. He wished, taking in her lush mouth and delicate hands, that he had thought of something snappy to say before he'd done this. But he hadn't, so he just sat there watching her cautiously, hoping she'd get the ball rolling for him. He didn't have to wait long.

“Um, hi. You're.. I know you. Did Natasha tell you I work here? I, uh, look... about the other day. Sorry about just, like, busting in on you and her like that. I was just curious, I guess. I didn't mean to snoop...” She trailed off, looking down at her book and snuffling with frustration. “I just, um, I saw that you were going to that floor. That day in the elevator. Ugh. I'm a total creep.”

He chuckled at that, and pulled the book out of her hands, checking the cover. The Maltese Falcon. Huh. “I like detective stories,” she offered softly, blushing. “You know this one? Dashiel Hammett?”

“I've read it,” he responded in a low voice. “And if you're a creep, so am I. Checked out your floor too, asked Natalia to get the inside track on you.”

“You think I was hell cat or something?” she asked, smiling shyly.

“Can you blame me? Look at you,” he teased, leaning his elbows on the counter and moving his face closer to hers.

“Look at _me_? Look at _you_." Her tone was flirtatious, and her eyes flicked over his sculpted biceps, which strained the sleeves of his leather jacket, then up to the stray lock that had escaped his slicked back hair. She had that same intrigued look that had gotten him so hot and bothered in the elevator. He returned her smile, brushed the lock back while combing his fingers through his hair, then pulled off the jacket and placed it on the stool beside him. If it just so happened he'd stolen one of Steve's very tight, long-sleeved athletic tees for this occasion, well, he wasn't above pulling a dirty trick or two to get her attention. He hoped she wouldn't mention the glove he was wearing on his left hand, although he figured she probably knew why he had it.

“You want some terrible coffee?” she asked. “It comes with my dazzling wit and companionship.” He nodded readily, admired her backside when she turned to grab the pot and a mug. His Girl Thursday. Definitely worth the risk.

+

  
“Okay, I see the point you're making, but I just don't think that Humphrey Bogart is the end-all and be-all of the noir genre-”

“How can you even say that? The man's a legend, darlin'. He's one of the best from Hollywood's golden age! Casablanca? Big Sleep? Sierra Madre?”

“Wait, does Casablanca even count as noir? Doesn't matter, let's say it does. You're not taking into account neo-noir. And I mean, I'll forgive this oversight, considering your circumstances. But we're definitely gonna need to rectify that. We can't even talk about noir unless you're up to date on how the genre has adopted itself the modern era. Fight Club? Pulp Fiction? Blue Velvet? I mean, if you haven't even seen Mulholland Drive or like, Brick, or-or...or the Vengeance Trilogy?! Then you're not playing with a full deck of cards and it's almost unfair for us to even debate this point. You've brought a knife to a gunfight, Sergeant Barnes.”

“That so, dollface? You gonna catch me up? Take me to the picture show, teach me the ways of neo-noir?”

“Ask me nicely, and I'll think about it.”

“Alright, how's this. I think you look like the best kind of trouble I've ever seen. You want to make some with me?”

“...Whew. Now _that's_ how you deliver a line. Okay. I have the day off on Monday. Give me your phone and I'll program my number into your contacts. You want any more of that varnish remover?”

“Sweetheart, I'd love some.”

+

He'd kept her company the whole night. She hadn't entirely believed he would, and some time around five she'd started hinting that if he was tired, she wouldn't be offended by his leaving. After she'd made a couple of comments along those lines, he'd gone quiet. Contemplative. She was kept busy for a while when a group of her usual early-morning customers stumbled in (nurses picking up dinner on their way home from their own graveyard shift). When things quieted down she'd returned to him and refilled his mug, then leaned over the counter to catch his downcast gaze.

“You telling me to take a powder?” he'd asked, not meeting her eyes.

“No! No. Are you kidding me? This has been the best Thursday I've ever spent trapped in this dump. I just... I didn't want you to feel like you had to stay if you needed to go, or if you're tired or... whatever,” she'd explained.

He'd looked up at her then, and she'd nearly swooned at the determined set of his mouth, the intense study he made of her face. “I'm right where I need to be,” he'd breathed.

She hadn't swooned. But it had been a close call.

He'd ridden the subway back to the Avengers tower with her after she'd finished sorting her tips and catching up with Annette. They'd sat next to each other silently. Darcy felt that with anyone else there might have been a strain, an awkward tension from the lack of conversation. But after spending the whole night talking, she'd found comfort in his strong, quiet confidence. It wasn't that they didn't have more to say to each other, just that the moment didn't warrant it being said. And at some point she must have laid her head on his shoulder, because that's where it was when he'd gently prodded her to wake up, whispering into her hair that they were just about to reach their stop. He'd walked her into the tower, one hand on her lower back as they made their way through the regular crowd out front.

The first ten seconds of the elevator ride had continued in the serene bubble that seemed to envelope them, until suddenly he'd reached out, tore open the emergency panel, and punched the “Brake” button. Then he'd turned to her.

She didn't need to be told what was happening, she understood by the tension in his musclebound frame, the dogged look in his eyes. Just watching him advance towards her had her breath feeling like it was caught somewhere in her diaphragm. They met in the middle of the confined space, her hands running along his ribs and up his back, then pulling his body closer as his mouth sank down to meet hers. It was sweet, but there was an edge of need to it. Bucky kissed her with lips and teeth and tongue, and it was a welcome assault on her senses. He pulled back, letting them both catch their breath.

“I want... I want to do this right, Darcy. I do. I'm sorry for eating face here but I'm halfway gone on you already and I'm not ashamed to admit that. And... I just needed to know. I couldn't wait until Monday for that." His breath tickled her neck as he spoke, and then he was laving at her skin there, the sensation of his hot mouth on her rendering her boneless and pliant. Her hands slid up into his hair and tugged lightly. As his lips brushed hers a second time, she found herself being walked backwards, then suddenly she was pressed against the elevator wall and a hard, thick thigh was pushing between her legs, up against her molten-hot cunt. Her head lolled against the wall behind her, and she let out a breathy whine as she ground against him.

“Oh, Jesus,” she whispered, her eyes rolling up to meet his. “Now you've gotten me all revved up and I'm gonna, what? Just go do paperwork, pretend I'm not going crazy here?”

He seemed to get a hold of himself then, and gently pulled his leg back, supporting her by the hips until she'd found her footing once more. He smirked, and leaned in to kiss her chastely. “Consider this as... an aperitif. Something to whet the appetite.” He turned and released the brake, and with a jerk the elevator began to ascend once more.

“Is that so, Sergeant? You gonna feed me, come Monday?” she asked, leaning into him and pressing her breasts against the back of his arm.

He turned his head, his nostrils flared at the sensation. He took quick, deep breath and she felt the hard muscles in his arm flex purposefully. She giggled, and he smirked again at her coy reaction, then said, “Darling, you give me a little of your free time, I'll give you anything you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **pitching woo: making love, romancing**  
>   
> 
> This fic is actually an elaborate ruse to preach the gospel of Ani DiFranco. I feel like this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Srjh7s7VA&ab_channel=ashleythomas) kind of explains what I'm going for with this Bucky/Darcy dynamic.


	6. smooth article

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Such terrible things happen round this place | And people disappear without a trace"
> 
> Danny Elfman, _Sucker for Mystery_

Jessica wasn't sure how it was possible that in the year 2015 people were still so pathetically bad at protecting themselves online but God bless 'em, they made her life easy. It'd taken her about twenty-three seconds to find Darcy Lewis online. Two minutes of scrolling through her list of friends on Facebook, which she hadn't made private, brought Jessica to Brigid's page.

Brigid didn't list her email on her page, so she got points from Jessica there, but she _did_ link her Instagram account to her Facebook, double-posting every photo for what Jessica could only assume was maximum public validation. She scrolled rapidly through the several hundred images on the account but found nothing of interest, mostly ocean-side selfies and bougie brunches. Shit.

Except, there in her precious little bio, she had a link to her Twitter account. Not excited about the prospect of wading through a sea of motivational quotes incorrectly attributed to historical figures or obscure poetry or whatever drivel this girl probably posted, Jessica sighed. Then clicked the link. Her biases were more or less confirmed, maybe not quite as bad as she'd feared; the unfurling list of 140-character posts was a mix of psychedelic song lyrics and veiled references to inside jokes.

“Ugh, fucking come on Brigid,” she muttered to herself. But then. Oh, then. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen, under a photo of a tan, lithe Brigid sipping a very colorful cocktail in a bikini, the little dope had written her contact information. Including an email address. “Come to mama.” Jessica grinned darkly, opening a new tab and bringing up a portal to Gmail. She typed “brigidomalley1985” into the box that asked for a user name and then took a couple stabs in the dark at the password. She didn't guess correctly but it didn't matter because after three tries Gmail asked her if she'd forgotten the password, and scrolling down at the list of options, she selected “Answer security question.”

“C'mon, c'mon,” she chanted, leaning back to grab her mug of black coffee and pulling the bottle of Wild Turkey from her bottom drawer. She sat in tense anticipation, waiting for the page to load. When it did, she let out a loud whoop and unscrewed the cap of the bourbon, pouring a healthy dose into her mug. “Oh Brigid, you beautiful simpleton,” she sighed happily.

The security question read: “What is the full name of your roommate?” Jessica allowed herself a triumphant sip of her morning cocktail, then typed in, “Darcy Lewis”. Brigid's inbox appeared, and Jessica began the real work of digging through the endless promotional emails from Amazon and Starbucks to find what she was looking for.

+

On a rainy Thursday afternoon somewhere in a quiet, residential neighborhood of Seattle, the unfortunate goon stomped miserably down a tree-lined avenue. He peeked out from under the hood of his rain jacket at each house, then sunk his chin back into his chest and hunched over again, continuing his trek. Finally, he came to a slightly run-down looking Victorian whose door sported the number 406. He sighed, and turned up the walkway. He stopped in front of the door, double checking the address on his phone one more time.

This was the place. He rang the bell, and waited. No answer. He rang twice more and when nothing happened he made an aboutface and walked back up the street. He found a hip-looking coffee shop down the street, the kind where half the customers were artsy-looking people sitting around typing up what looked like manuscripts and the other half were textbook-touting college kids pretending to study. Perfect. He ordered a coffee and a sandwich and settled in, pulling his phone from his pocket and browsing the internet listlessly. He stayed for a few hours, and when darkness fell, around six, he left the cafe and made his way to the house.

He tried the door bell again. Still no answer. Peering around the neighborhood leerily, he descended the front steps and followed the driveway around to the back. There was a fence there that came up to his waist. He checked again to see if anyone was around. Seeing no one, he grabbed the fence in both hands and hopped it easily. He quickly crossed the back yard and approached one of the first floor windows. He gave it a tug, not expecting for it to be open, and was surprised when it rose easily. He took one more look at the houses behind the backyard, then ducked into the house through the window.

He made a loop of the house efficiently. No one home. He sat at the kitchen table, located at the back of the house. He pondered his next move, then relocated himself to the simple living room in the front. It had a bay window that faced out onto the street along which he had approached. He took a seat on the sofa, and settled in once more.

He woke sometime around six the next morning. He hadn't heard or seen anything. He checked to make sure nothing had moved or changed in the bedrooms upstairs since he'd passed out, some time around three am, then exited through the back window. He hopped the fence once more and marched quickly back the way he had come. His mind was racing. It was possible he'd gotten bad intel, but the Roxxon heavies in Seattle had said that this was the house of Brigid's mother, and that she kept a pretty regular schedule. So if she hadn't been home yesterday, and she hadn't come last night... He groaned to himself, not liking the explanation that seemed to him most likely.

Somebody had tipped her off that he was coming.

+

Jessica wasn't _exactly_ sure what she was looking for. She knew from experience that it was probably too much to ask that Brigid's employers, this escort service, helpfully use an email that identified themselves as such. So she had an eye out for anything that looked like it could be mistaken for a personal email account, anything containing names or dates.

After a few false starts, she found it. Repeated messages from a woman named Larissa, whose account was just a jumble of numbers and letters, each one containing dates, names, addresses, phone numbers, and the kicker, physical descriptions of men.

Lewis had said SoHo, she recalled. Might as well start there. She searched “SoHo Female Escort Services” and began working her way through the listed phone numbers. The first three were a bust.

A nasal-voiced woman picked up the phone when she tried the fourth number. “Hello, New York City Elite Escorts, this is Larissa speaking how may I help you?”

Yahtzee, Jessica thought. “Hi, so sorry about this,” she started, in her best air-headed valley girl impression, “but I was at a party the other night with one of your employees? Um, Brigid something? And I borrowed some money from her to get a cab home. I'd really like to pay her back but I don't have her number or anything. Could you, like, tell me where I could find her or give me her number or something?”

“Sorry ma'am, we don't give out personal information about our employees,” the woman said in a bored tone.

“Okay but like, she does work for you, right? Brigid, uh, God what was it. Like, um, O'Malley? I think?”

The woman heaved a put-upon sigh, told her to wait a moment, then put her on hold. Jessica set the phone to speaker and placed it on the desk, waiting for it to stop emitting saxophone-heavy smooth jazz. Finally, the woman picked up again.

“Hello? Are you there?” she asked. 

“Hi! Yes, I'm here,” Jessica answered.

“Okay I can't give you any information but I can confirm that we did have a Brigid O'Malley working for us but she has been let go. That's all I'm at liberty to disclose to you.”

“That's fine!” Jessica chirped. “Maybe I can ask the guy who threw the party...”

“Sure ma'am, whatever. Anything else?”

“No, thank you so, so much much! Have a very blessed day!” Jessica ended the call, sat back in her seat. So she definitely was an escort, which didn't necessarily mean anything nefarious. A company that lists itself in the white pages takes a pretty big gamble by secretly pimping their escorts out as prostitutes, but it wouldn't be that surprising if they did.

In which case... they could be looking at an angry, possessive john doing something to the woman. She'd seen plenty of those before. But it could also be a case of cold feet. The girl got in over her head, cut her losses and ran. Lewis had mentioned that she had a healthy amount of pot in her room, which Jessica didn't think would be enough to set someone on the lam, but maybe there was heavier stuff involved too. She tilted her mug to the ceiling, swallowing the last of the boozy brew.

What she needed was some perspective. She had a feeling she'd burned her bridges with Lewis, at least for the time being, so she needed to get a hold of somebody else who knew this girl. Get an idea of her threshold for pressure, what made her tick. She switched back to the email tab, and kept digging.

+

Another Thursday on the books, Darcy's eyes drooped on her walk from the diner to her apartment. She dragged her feet, and her arms swung limply by her side. She did not raise her eyes from the cracked sidewalk in front of her, but simply focused on putting one foot in front of another. She didn't know if she'd ever felt so physically drained while also so emotionally keyed up.

The kiss with Barnes that morning had been... intense.

Fucking hot, she corrected. Even now her panties got a little damp when she thought about it, her skin prickling where he'd clutched at her. She lifted one heavy hand to her lips and smiled, lost in thought. She let herself inside the building, almost passing by the mailboxes before remembering it had been several days since she'd collected anything. She fished around in her backpack until she found the key, and pulled out a thick bunch of glossy magazines and envelopes from the small locker with her apartment number on it. She shambled the rest of the way inside to her door, grateful for the lack of unwanted visitors hanging around this week.

Upon entering she'd dropped the mail on her bed and made her way into the bathroom, stripping as she went. She showered efficiently and changed into grubby sweats before making herself a bag of popcorn and snagging two leftover slices of pizza from the fridge, then returned to her room. She very carefully avoided looking at the door of Brigid's bedroom the entire time.

Darcy settled in to watch L.A. Confidential for the umpteenth time, chewing on her pizza and still occasionally smiling at the memory of Barnes' lips on hers. She was asleep before Kim Basinger even appeared on screen.

The next morning, she woke feeling groggy and bloated from the late-night sodium feast. She came to slowly, and when she sat up, she groaned at the realization that she'd kicked the pile of mail off the bed some time during the night. Assessing the scattered assortment of bills and tabloids on the floor, she noticed the bright blue corner of a postcard poking out. She leaned over to pluck it from the mess. 

Did she know anyone who was traveling, or had any reason to send her something like that? Nothing immediately came to mind. She examined the front: a painting of a sunny beach, with bright block letters splayed across the left upper-hand corner that read, “ _Greetings from Neptune, California!_ ” She turned it over. There was no return address, of course, just her own name and residence printed on the right hand side, under the postage. On the left side was a message, only one sentence long. Darcy knew almost immediately who it must be from.

“ _When the going gets tough, the tough go bowling._ ”

Brigid.

+

It didn't take Jessica much longer to find the contact information of Brigid's mother buried in an email from several years ago, when she'd changed service providers and gotten a new number. She picked up her phone again, and dialed. It rang for a minute, then two. Jessica wheezed with frustration. Suddenly, someone picked up. She waited for a greeting, but none came. The person on the other end of the line was waiting for her to speak.

“Uh, hello?” she tried. “I'm looking for Regan O'Malley?”

“This is she,” answered an accented woman's voice.

“Hi! My name's Darcy. Your daughter is my roommate but I haven't heard from her in a few days, so I was just wondering if you've talked to her recently?” she asked brightly.

There was a pause, the sound of the woman's hand rasping over the speaker of the phone followed by muffled speaking. Jessica fidgeted impatiently.

“You're not calling from Darcy's phone,” the woman said accusingly.

“Oh, uh, you noticed that huh? Yeah I... lost mine,” she bluffed.

This was met with hostile silence. Finally, calmly, Regan spoke. “I don't believe you, whoever you are. And I want you to know, all of you, that you won't be getting your hands on me or my daughter. She's done with the likes of all of ye, and if you call me again, I'll, I'll... Don't call me again.”

Jessica opened her mouth, trying to think of something to salvage the ruse, but before she could say another word, there was a click and the line went dead. Regan had hung up on her.

But not before telling her, inadvertently, that Brigid was alive. And that there was a good chance her mother knew where she was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **smooth article: sharp; said of somebody as a form of praise or approval**  
>   
> 
> Another eighties [masterpiece](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNt5dCetZsM&ab_channel=paulallen360), although I love this one without irony.
> 
> This chapter has been brought to you by extremely fortunate coincidences and the tiniest bit of fudging on how social media/email works. :D


	7. duck soup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If you needed me | I would come to you | I'd swim the seas | For to ease your pain"
> 
> Townes Van Zandt, _If I Needed You_

Darcy didn't have much of a chance to do anything about the post card and the information it provided over the weekend, but she'd had plenty of time to contemplate her next move. So when Monday dawned clear and bright, she'd already been awake for an hour. She made herself a cup of coffee, showered, and dressed. The glasses-clad face in the bathroom mirror peered back at her nervously. 

She reminded herself that she'd moved twelve times when she was a kid, and every new town had been full of snooty jerks like Jessica Jones. Her dad had never tolerated her inevitable tears from being picked last for kickball or getting teased because she didn't know what trends were popular with each new group of kids. She'd spent most of her childhood feeling like she was on the outside, only ever seeming to settle into a few tentative friendships just as Lucas received a new posting and it was time for them to move again. It had made her tough, though. Maybe not tough like Jessica, she mused, wondering if that woman let anyone get close to her. But she had survived her fucked up childhood, and she had survived two years of misery at Culver University, and she had survived the Destroyer; she could handle a little more hostility from the private investigator if it meant she'd help her.

And if this went as poorly as her last visit? Well, she still had her date with Barnes to look forward to.

+

Jessica was taking her time on the walk home from brunch with Trish. The conversation she'd had over omelettes and mimosas with her adopted sister had been productive. After a weekend of hard drinking and late-night stakeouts, the sunlight and brisk, late-October air felt good on her skin. The combined effect of the champagne, her sole confidante's perspective, and the exercise were helping her organize all the facts she'd gathered so far.

Here's what she knew: Brigid had definitely worked as an escort for NYC Elite Escorts. Jessica had made a list of all the available data about her clients and had checked out a few of them over the weekend. All high-rollers, predominantly middle-aged and mostly living in downtown Manhattan. She'd found the sleazy boyfriend, Kyle, stoned almost to the point of uselessness in his shitty studio apartment way out in Rockaway Beach, and had pushed him around a little until he'd revealed that he and Brigid had been selling mostly pot and Ecstasy. She'd made him write down a list of their most frequent and highest quantity buyers, then threatened to visit again if she found he'd withheld any information from her. She hadn't bothered calling Regan O'Malley back but she had tried a couple other friends whose numbers she'd found in the emails and as far as she could tell, Brigid had kept things pretty tight-lipped. No one seemed to know anything about where she'd gone or why she'd left.

There was one client that had been particularly interesting to Jessica. Hugh Jones III. The CEO of Roxxon Oil & Energy. Not a very accessible figure by most accounts, seeing as he was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country, if not the western hemisphere. But there was his name and address in the emails from Larissa. By Jessica's count, Brigid had been hired by Jones at least a dozen times in the last two months. It seemed pretty frequent, suspiciously so. Especially for a man with as many resources as Jones; why had he fixated on Brigid? Not to mention that he was married, although Jessica rejected the idea that marriage would stop a guy who held that kind of water from doing whatever he wanted. The sky is blue, water is wet, rich pricks will be pricks, and the world keeps turning.

Her mind drifted back to her earlier conversation with Trish. After laying out what she'd discovered about the missing girl, Trish had wisely advocated for Jessica making nice with Darcy. She'd suggested it might not be a bad idea to get a look at the damage in Brigid's room. There could be something the police were ignoring or Darcy had missed. But Jessica didn't relish the thought of eating crow, and even felt a little ashamed when she remembered how callously she'd dismissed the seemingly well-intentioned girl.

Dammit Jessica, she thought. Always making life harder than it has to be.

She was pulled from her ruminations when she looked up from her black Doc Martens to find that she was already back at her apartment building and the very woman she'd just been considering was sitting on the front stoop. She was clad in that same pea coat as last time but now there was a hideous marigold beanie adorning her head, and she was wearing thick, plastic-framed glasses.

She approached Darcy watchfully, fiddling with her fuzzy wool of her grey scarf as she squinted against the mid-Autumn sun. “You again, huh?” she said, in a much warmer tone than the last time they'd spoken. 

Darcy peered up at her anxiously, and hesitatingly offered, “I know you aren't interested in my case. But I got something in the mail. I'm... I'm almost positive it's from Brigid and... I just thought I'd ask you one more time to help me.”

“Let me see?” Jessica asked, leaning on one hip and extending her hand.

Darcy reached into the backpack on the step beside her, and pulled out a slightly dented postcard, which she handed to Jessica. The investigator examined the front, then flipped it over and quickly read message on the back. She let out a little laugh, then turned serious as she chewed on the inside of her mouth thoughtfully for a moment. She sniffed, and nodded.

“Okay. Come on up. I have an idea.”

+

“Coffee? Water? Bourbon?” Jessica asked as she opened the door, heading directly for the kitchen.

She was already pulling out the grounds and filling a paper filter, so Darcy answered from the office, “Yeah sure, coffee sounds good.”

“I've been doing some homework on your friend,” Jessica's voice drifted out from a few rooms away. Darcy moved further into the apartment and saw that she was pulling off her leather jacket and gloves, digging through a pile of laundry on her bed that reminded Darcy way too much of her own bedroom. She unearthed a thick, nubby sweater and pulled it on before returning to the kitchen to fill two mugs when the old, stained coffee-maker on the counter beeped cheerfully.

“Milk? Sugar?” she asked.

“Uh, no, tha-”

“Good,” she cut in, “'Cause I don't have those things. Here, take yours. Let's talk. I found the company Brigid worked for, and I've made a list of her clients.” The two women moved to the office, sitting in the same seats as they had the last time they'd met, although the chemistry between them felt drastically altered. Darcy listened silently as Jessica filled her in on the snooping she'd done, the calls she'd made to Brigid's employers and her mother, and some of the things she'd seen while doing reconnaissance on the client list. She passed the notebook paper over to Darcy after mentioning it, and the woman's eyes scanned it carefully.

“Hugh Jones III?” she asked in disbelief.

“I know, I couldn't believe that one myself. Address checks out too, took myself for a little visit last night and saw him leave his brownstone around ten, come back around two am,” Jessica answered, rocking her office chair back and forth as she thought.

Darcy took a moment to process everything she'd just been told. She gathered that this mutual exchange of information was Jessica's form of an olive branch after her brushoff last week, and accepted it. She was too caught up in the strange, secret details of Brigid's life to worry much about holding any grudges against the acerbic woman. She pushed a little on how Jessica had found out about all of this, and felt that same envy and admiration Natasha had stirred up when the woman began casually rattling off her methods.

“So, what now? I don't know what this message is supposed to be about, I mean, I know Brigid loved bowling but... I dunno. It's a weird ass thing to write on a postcard and send to the roommate you ran out on. She might've sent a little rent money along with the cryptic message, you know?”

Jessica nodded, squinted her eyes as she continued cogitating. They sipped their coffee quietly for a few minutes, and then Jessica said, “Yeah. Here's my idea. It's the oddest thing that your roommate ended up in Neptune, of all places, because it just so happens I know a PI who works out there. I'm gonna give her a call, and we'll see if she can't track this Brigid chick down. It'll be good to confirm for ourselves that she's still alive. And I think she owes you some damn answers.”

Darcy raised one eyebrow at this idea. “This gumshoe of yours,” she joked, “she any good?”

“Who, Veronica? Yeah. One of the best,” Jessica spoke absently, already scrolling through her contacts. “A sweetheart too. A damn marshmallow, really.”

+

Business was booming at Mars Investigations. It was so busy, in fact, that Veronica had hired an assistant, Joan, to start taking calls and helping her with record keeping when she was out doing legwork. She let herself into the office after a long night spent staking out a local warehouse. Backup's nails skittered on the hardwood floor as he squeezed himself around her legs and ran to Joan's desk, where she was holding out a treat for him. His tail wagged rapidly as he inhaled the biscuit, then began licking the assistant's hands.

“Suck up,” Veronica sing-songed, before opening the door to her father's old office and dropping her bag on the sagging couch where she spent more nights sleeping than her own bed. She reached into one of the filing cabinets, pulling out a massive paper bag full of dog chow. At the sound of the kibble hitting his bowl, Backup rushed into the room and began to gorge himself.

“Calm down, buddy! No one else in this office wants to eat your processed meat pebbles, I promise!” Veronica scratched behind his ears affectionately then left him to his meal, returning to the outer office and leaning against Joan's desk. “Did I miss anything interesting?”

Joan had been laughing at Backup's lack of etiquette, and now turned to the notepad beside her computer monitor. “Uhh, let me see. Yep, a few calls. Names and numbers are here,” she handed the paper to Veronica.

“Great. Backup's not the only one who's starving. I'll deal with these, then how about some food?” Veronica asked over her shoulder, already returning to her office and collapsing into the chair behind her desk.

"I could grab us some burritos?" her assistant offered, picking up her purse from beside the desk.

“You know I can't say no to burritos, Joan!”

She scanned the list, then started when she saw the final name and attached phone number. Jessica Jones. New York City area code.

“Hey hold on a second, when'd this last call come in?”

“Jessica Jones? Um, around nine this morning. She said to call her back ASAP, by the way.”

Veronica frowned down at the paper, then picked up her phone to call the number. There were few people she knew who were as much or more of a lone wolf than she was, and her surly east coast pal was one of them. If Jones was calling her for something, Veronica could be pretty damn sure it was important.

+

When Bucky phoned her, sometime around three pm, she'd already returned to her dingy apartment and was sitting next to the pile of belongings in Brigid's room, scrutinizing its contents and trying to will the pieces together into a coherent answer to all her questions.

“Hello?” she asked, startled by the sound of her ringtone in the quiet, echoing space.

“Hiya sweetheart, it's Bucky. Got any time for an old dog like me today?” Bucky, she exulted. He wants me to call him Bucky. She paused her incessant poring over of the facts surrounding her roommate's disappearance to celebrate this minor but significant victory. She looked around at the wreckage, and made up her mind.

“You know, I think I just might. Want to come over to my place? We'll watch some film noir and eat pizza. It's how us kids date these days,” she bantered. “And I want to show you something.”

“Show me something, huh? I can think of a few things I'd like to see. Where do you live?” he asked, and she could hear him rummaging around for a pen and paper in the background.

“Long Island City. You ready? Here's my address.”

+

"Ronnie baby, thanks for getting back to me so quickly. It's been a while, you still enjoying that California sunshine? When are you gonna come back out to New York, where your blackened little heart belongs?"

"I couldn't if I wanted to, Jess, you wouldn't believe the number of men who cheat on their bored housewives out here, and how many of them don't believe it until I show them the x-rated proof!"

"Uh, I can believe that pretty easily, actually. Hey listen, this is more than just a social call. I've got a missing persons case out here, twenty-something girl who was doing some escort work, dealing on the side. She up and vanished a few weeks ago, but her roommate got a postcard from her the other day. You won't believe where it's from."

"No way. The world's not that small. It can't be."

"Oh yes, I'm afraid it is."

"How'd the roommate know where she sent it from?"

"The genius picked one that said Neptune, California on the front. Picture of the beach. So-o-o... she could be trying to throw Darcy and anyone keeping an eye on Darcy off her scent. But judging by her actions so far, I'm gonna take a giant leap of faith here and say that she actually just sent a postcard with the name of the town where she's hiding out."

"Incredible."

"You're telling me, it's like they're doing our work for us these days. What d'you say? Can you spare me a couple hours, check around Neptune to see if anyone's seen a Brigid O'Malley? Possibly traveling with her mother?"

"Could it be? Is the great Jessica Jones asking _moi_ for a favor?"

"Alright, wise guy, what's it gonna cost me?"

"Oh, nothing too over-the-top. Just name your firstborn after me, we'll call it even."

"Very cute. How's Logan, by the way?"

"Probably about as good as Nick."

"Complicated men, huh?"

"And the even more complicated women who love them. Okay, send me a picture of your jane, I'll make a few calls. I'll let you know what I find in an hour. Two, tops."

"You really are a softie, Veronica Mars."

"Ugh, please don't, Jess. You know I'm gonna call on you to repay the favor some day."

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Ron."

+

He showed up about a half hour later, motorcycle helmet in hand. She moved to wrap her arms around his waist before she could second-guess herself, and laid her head against his leather-covered pectoral. They stood in the doorway, hugging, for several minutes before he leaned down to peck the top of her head and she grabbed his helmet, taking a step back and leading him into the apartment.

He survey the place quickly, efficiently. Then turned back to her. She bit her lip, torn between wanting to feel his hands on her again and wanting to show him the carnage behind Brigid's door. The latter impulse won out, and she moved towards the woman's bedroom without waiting for him to follow.

She heard him whistle softly behind her as he crossed the threshold, and when she turned back he was at the window, inspecting the fractured pane behind the piece of cardboard she'd taped to the frame. He looked up at her. “What happened?” Darcy took his hand and tugged him back to the living room, shutting the door behind her and pulling him down onto the couch beside her. She laid out the series of events leading to Brigid's absence and the room being trashed, and what she'd learned afterwards. She explained how Jessica had left a message for her PI friend in California, and while they were waiting to hear back, her new accomplice would continue scoping out the client list she'd compiled from Brigid's emails.

Bucky listened intently, eyes trained on hers. When she was finished he frowned, rubbing his jaw and leaning forward to peer at the innocuous-looking door with misgiving. “I don't think you should stay here,” he sighed, looking back at her.

“I've been living here since the break-in, and nothing has happened,” Darcy pointed out.

“That's swell, but what if they come back?” He stood up, and went back to the room, entering again and assessing the damage.

She leaned against the doorway, watching him. “I have a taser?”

He scoffed at that, and jabbed his hand towards the shattered pieces of wood on the floor. “You think that'll stop whoever did this?”

“I can take care of myself!” she muttered crossly.

He sighed again, and slid towards her, into her personal space, his hands sliding up her arms soothingly and then coming around to rest on the swell of her ass. “I'm sure you can, sweetheart,” he breathed into her hair as her shoulders sagged and she rested against him. She clutched at the ribbed material of his shirt and he leaned down, nipping at her bottom lip, then licking at the inside of her mouth when she opened up to him eagerly.

“I don't want to fight, I just wanted to be straight with you,” she whispered when he pulled away.

“I appreciate that. Promise me you'll call if anything happens, anything suspicious? I don't mind hanging around here if you want me to.” His gloved hand came up to cradle the back of her head, and she pushed her knuckles into the hard, tense ridges of his muscled back.

“I promise,” she breathed.

“Good,” he nodded, kissing her furrowed brow. “Now, I think you mentioned something about a film and some pizza?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **duck soup: easy, a piece of cake**  
> 
> Just a lovely folk [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaP8NGML_QE&ab_channel=rottensun)... Oh and hell YES I wrote Veronica Mars into my neo-noir story about lady detectives. (I hope I do her justice and I apologize profusely if I don't.) Why? Because VM is my JAM. :D


	8. behind the eight-ball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm the innocent bystander | Somehow I got stuck | Between the rock and the hard place | And I'm down on my luck"
> 
> Warron Zevon, _Lawyers, Guns and Money_

It hadn't taken Veronica more than an hour to find out where Brigid and her mother were staying. Neptune wasn't that big of a town and once a few palms got greased, none of the locals minded squealing on an outsider. Which is why Veronica was currently slouched low in the driver's seat of her '69 Pontiac Firebird, fingers absently running along Backup's bristly red coat as he dozed on the seat next to her. She was parked in the lot of a used car dealership, and glanced quickly across the road to check the rows of closed doors at the Camelot Motel, before upending the dregs of her energy drink into her mouth and tossing it over her shoulder into the space behind her seat.

The door of room eleven opened, and the woman who stepped out was a dead ringer for the picture Jessica had sent her of Brigid O'Malley. The older woman who followed was almost a carbon copy of the first, and Veronica would have bet her best telephoto lens that she was Regan O'Malley.

“Showtime,” she whispered to Backup, who lifted his yellow eyes to sniff at her curiously, then settled his head back on his paws. She started the car, easing it into first and exiting the lot only after the O'Malley women had driven their rental car a hundred meters down the road. She followed from a distance. The Firebird had been a bit of an ostentatious choice, she could admit that, but she'd painted it black and vintage cars were popular enough with the 09ers that generally she could get away with it. Still, no need to show her hand before she found out where the women were headed. Her brow furrowed when they turned down a side street that headed towards the water, and she passed them when they parked in a beachside spot, parking her own car a block away. She could just make them out as they sauntered down to the water. They were strolling idly, deep in conversation.

“Okay,” she spoke again to Backup. “Ready to earn your keep?”

Exiting the car, she came around the other side and opened the door, giving Backup a tap on his hindquarters and hissing, “Go, boy! Run! Come on, go!” She jumped towards him and he met her energy, jumping up on her before turning and tearing off in the direction of the beach. She followed at a canter, giving him a chance to encounter the women, running circles around them while barking excitedly.

She caught up a minute later. “Backup, hey, come on, leave the nice ladies alone! Backup, come!” She grabbed the terrier's collar and quickly snapped the leash's clasp onto it. “I'm so sorry about that, he's just so fast, sometimes he slips right past me!” she gushed apologetically, pulling on the leash and taking a step back from the women.

Brigid glanced sideways at her mother shiftily, then gave a curt nod to Veronica, answering, “No problem.” They turned to continue walking.

“Wait!” Veronica cried. Okay, Academy Award moment, she thought, then said with the hesitation of someone just realizing something, “Don't I... know you from somewhere? You look... familiar.”

“No,” Regan snapped. Her body language suggested the conversation was over. Hardball it is, Veronica amended mentally.

“I think I do,” Veronica retorted, face settling into a more serious expression. She glanced around the beach, saw it was deserted, and pulled out her phone. She brought up the picture of Darcy that Jessica had sent her, and held the phone out for the women to see. “I think someone is looking for you. Buddy system, you know? Us gals gotta stick together.”

Brigid gasped and took a step back, but Veronica was advancing towards her now. She put the phone away, and raised her hands. “I'm not here to rat you out, and I don't care what you were up to in New York. I'm just the messenger, honestly.”

“And what's the message?” Regan gritted out. All three women stood frozen, eyeing each other, and the fraught silence was softened only slightly by the roar of the aquamarine waves crashing onto the sand beside them.

Veronica's head tilted and she crossed her arms obstinately. “You need to call Darcy Lewis. You owe her an explanation.” 

“Here. Do it now. You can use my phone.”

+

“Hello?” Darcy answered breathlessly, pushing at Bucky's shoulders lightly to get him to remove his lips from where he'd been laving her dusky right nipple.

There was a pause. “Hey, it's... Brigid.” Darcy flailed, trying to push herself into a sitting position and accidentally elbowing Bucky in the process. She leaned back again, and paused Blade Runner, which had been playing, forgotten, on the computer from the other side of the bed. “Ah, shit,” she muttered towards him, “Sorry. I really gotta take this. It's... it's my roommate.” She narrowed her eyes meaningfully, and he arched an eyebrow, then nodded. His hand continued petting her through her panties.

“Wh-what, guh, Bucky,” she was not succeeding at keeping it together when he fondled her wet folds, then her clitoris, and she gave him the gimlet eye before trying again, “Sorry Brigid. Where are you? What the fuck is going on? Someone tore your room apart and all your pictures are gone, dude.”

“Yeah, I.. are you okay?” Brigid asked, pausing at the sound of Darcy's high-pitched squeak. She closed her eyes, and grabbed at Bucky's wrist. He curled the two fingers he'd eased inside of her forwards again, and she bit her lip to keep from moaning into the phone. She slapped his arm lightly, twisting her lips and squinting at him with annoyance. He smiled rakishly and pouted, pulled his fingers away, sucking them clean, then contented himself with returning his attention to her breasts as she tried to focus on the phone call.

“I'm here, sorry. I was kind of in the middle of something but I'm listening. Tell me what's going on, please.” She dragged her fingers through Bucky's hair, scratching lightly at his scalp, and he moved over her, resting on his elbows as he settled between her legs and rocked his jean-covered crotch up into hers.

“I'm really sorry about everything, Darcy. I didn't mean to make you worry, that's why I sent you the postcard. And I'm sorry about the room too. I'm gonna mail you some money for rent and the security deposit soon, okay? I just... I just needed to get out of that situation. With um, everything. I was really scared for my life after what I did, and... and just... don't worry about the bag, okay? Just burn it, dump it, whatever. I thought I was being some kinda hero, like I was gonna come back for it and expose the whole damn thing but... I'm, um, I'm here with my mum. We've talked it over and I'm just gonna let it go. I was in way over my head, you know?”

“Wha?” Darcy breathed, trying to concentrate through the feel of Bucky's hands, one flesh and one metal, gripping her thighs and pulling them up around his waist, his lips on her collarbone. “What bag? Look, I... I get it, oh God... Uh, sorry. I get it Brigid, I do. I just think it's shitty how you handled it.”

“I know, I... I... I know. And the pictures, uh, that was me, by the way.”

“What?!” Darcy cried, pushing at Bucky's chest again and leaning up on her elbows. “What do you mean?”

“I took them with me, I thought, like... maybe they wouldn't know I lived there if there weren't any pictures of me laying around. I dunno, Darce, I was coked out of my mind when I split. I'm sorry.”

Darcy said nothing for a moment, and Bucky reared back in concern. Tears had begun to well in her eyes and she was biting her lip hard enough that the skin there had turned white. Her nails were digging into his back and she looked to be about two seconds away from screaming, crying, or both. And not in the way he wanted her to be. He grabbed the phone.

“This the cokie frill who left my girl high and dry, put her in danger?”

“Uh, what? Who are you?” Brigid's voice demanded suspiciously. “Bucky!” Darcy squealed, grabbing the phone back.

“That was just my, uh... date...” she explained with embarrassment. “He's mad because, you know, you really dicked me over here.”

Brigid sighed. “I'll send you the check as soon as I can.”

Darcy dropped her head back onto her pillow, and sighed as well. “Are you okay, at least?”

“Yeah. We're gonna lay low for a while, your friend Veronica here said she'll help us. Thanks for sending her our way,” Brigid answered. Darcy could hear the sounds of the ocean and a barking dog in the background.

“Uh, yeah. Sure. Okay. Well... take care of yourself, I guess.”

“You too. Sorry again, for everything.”

Darcy said goodbye, and hung up the phone. “That was _very_ rude,” she growled at Bucky, tossing it aside. She pulled him back down to nip at his lip angrily, their teeth clacking together as he groaned into the aggressive kiss.

He smiled at her, then rocked his crotch against hers once more. “Guess I should do some penance then, huh?” he breathed as he sucked at her neck, her collarbones, her breasts, working his way down her body. His hands massaged her hips, sliding around to grab at her ass before lifting her body up so he could tug her underwear down her legs.

“That's right, mister,” she panted, as he kissed one hip bone, then the other. “Get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **behind the eight-ball: In a difficult position, in a tight spot**  
>   
> 
> Real talk: I used to try to play this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP5Xv7QqXiM&ab_channel=DarrylHushaw) at parties in high school. It was... not a big hit. My teenage years were an awkward time.


	9. lifetaker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What could it be | It's a mirage | You're scheming on a thing | That's sabotage"
> 
> Beastie Boys, _Sabotage_

She woke before he did on Tuesday morning, dripping with sweat; Bucky's supersoldier metabolism had him throwing off heat like a furnace under her heavy duvet. It should have been uncomfortable, but like the other day on the subway, something that might have bothered her with anyone else was comforting with him. She rolled over, trying not to disturb the heavy mechanized arm that was slung around her waist, and leaned forward to kiss the scarred flesh between the metallic panels of his shoulder and his clavicle. She marveled at the feel of his body against hers, swinging a leg over his waist to rub herself against his thigh. She mouthed at his jaw, then gently pecked his cheek. She felt a puff of air against her face, and suddenly she was on her back, Bucky wide awake, rising to his knees above her and grinning. She looked down to see that he had woken at full salute, so to speak, and reached out to stroke him. He lowered himself towards her, his deep, husky morning voice giving her goosebumps.

"Now you've got _me_ all revved up, you little minx. How do you feel about a morning roll in the hay?”

She chose not to answer him verbally, just dipped two fingers into herself and found she was already hot and slick, then nodded at him. She felt him nudge against her slit, and wheezed with need, pushing up and using her legs, wrapped around his, to steer him where she wanted him to be.

“I could get used to this,” she teased, while giving him a goofy grin.

He nodded, sinking all the way in, the muscles in his arms twisting as he held himself above her and peered down to observe the way her body accepted his. He leaned forward, his lips meeting hers gingerly, and answered into her mouth, “Me too, Darcy. Me too.”

+

Brigid O'Malley was sitting on the beach, watching the ocean. Her mother had gone for a walk with Veronica to hash out the particulars of their getaway plan, but Brigid hadn't felt like talking about it anymore, and had opted to stay where she was. She was watching the waves ceaselessly push themselves forward and then sink into the sand, disappearing to nothing, the energy that had brought them there rolling back only to clash with the next incoming rush of water. It was hypnotic, and she was spaced out from the relief that her months-long nightmare was finally behind her. She'd even been able to make her peace with Darcy, thanks to Veronica. She was lucky to be alive, let alone have things be going so much better than she'd expected when she frantically booked herself that flight to Seattle. She sighed, laid her head on her knees, and closed her eyes to enjoy the sound of the ocean and the feel of the warm sun sapping the tension from her limbs.

That's when she felt something hard and cold against the back of her neck.

"Move,” a man's voice directed her. “And I pull the trigger. I've been looking for you a while now. You're not an easy girl to find, Brigid O'Malley.”

+

Darcy had no waitressing shifts on Tuesdays, but she always popped into the Avengers tower in the morning to straighten out whatever mess Jane had made over the weekend. So after keening through her release and enjoying the frenzied, almost savage thrusts of Bucky finding his own, then indulging in a few minutes of post-coital snuggling, she'd pulled herself up and shuffled out of the bedroom to get some coffee going.

They'd gone another round in the shower, then debated the merits of Fritz Lang on the couch while eating breakfast. As they were finally exiting Darcy's building, she silently agonized over how late she was going to be as she began digging through her pockets for her transit card. Suddenly a large helmet was shoved into her hands. Looking up at Bucky with puzzlement, he angled his head towards the very fast-looking motorcycle parked beside the curb and waggled his eyebrows at her rakishly.

“Oh, _hell_ yes,” she whispered, cramming the helmet onto her head, depositing herself on the seat behind him, and wrapping her arms snugly around his waist.

She made it to work on time that morning.

+

  
“You work for Roxxon?” Brigid asked listlessly. Well, I had a good run, she thought to herself.

There was no answer, just the cold hard muzzle of the gun boring into her skin. “I did too, in a way, I guess. I was sleeping with Hugh Jones III, but he was paying me for that honor. You know him?” she asked. She didn't know what she hoped to get out of disclosing this information, mostly she was just desperately trying to buy herself time.

“He's my boss,” the voice answered. “He sent me to do this.”

“He tell you why you're doing this?” she asked, sniffing back her tears. There was no answer, but then again, he hadn't shot her yet either.

“I stole something from his house. I know I shouldn't have, I know stealing is wrong. But so is killing thousands of people, right? At least I think so. I couldn't believe Hugh was stupid enough to ask me to come over to his place, y'know? I think he just wanted to fuck me in his home office, like he was sticking it to that poor woman who married him or... something. Some stupid power play. I dunno. But he passed out afterwards, right there in his office chair, which will happen sometimes when you mix whiskey, pot, and opioids.”

“What'd you take?” the voice asked.

She ignored the question, taking her time, still stalling. “He left the safe open. I mean, I don't know if it was arrogance or idiocy. Maybe both? I was just some object he used to get his rocks off, you work for him. You probably know him better than I do.”

“Answer the question,” the voice commanded.

“It was nothing, really. That's what I thought at the time,” she continued. “Just a piece of paper with a chemical formula on it. A drawing of some covalent bonds or whatever, I don't know, I don't remember shit from high school chemistry. But I thought, hey, finders keepers, right? Okay I was high out of my mind too, it wasn't a great idea. I get that now. There was a sample, in like a little plastic baggie you use to pack your kid's lunch. They looked like glowing yellow crystals. They were pretty, I thought maybe I could sell the formula to Hammer or Stark, sell the crystals down in Chinatown. I dunno. Maybe I shoulda stuck around with Jones, seems like I was pretty arrogant or stupid or something myself.”

There was no response, but suddenly the feel of the cold metal receded. A man sat down in the sand next to her. He was immense, his steroidal-looking arms stretched the cotton of his hoodie and the seams of his jeans were strained by his muscular thighs. The unfortunate goon looked at her face for a long moment, seemingly weighing her sins. He turned to the ocean. “It was Nitramene, wasn't it? You still got it with you?”

She shook her head, observing his profile. He was sort of handsome, in a generic way. “You heard of it? It took me _forever_ to figure out what it was. But no, I don't have it anymore, I... I dumped it.”

“Yeah, heard rumors about it. You lying? We searched your apartment, we could always go back and look again.”

“Why do you work for him?” she asked, avoiding the question.

He shrugged, still facing the water. “Fell into the job, I guess.”

“When he sent you to kill me, did he bribe you or threaten you?” she asked, eyeing him shrewdly.

His head sagged, and he examined the gun in his hand. “Threatened.”

“He got something on you?”

The goon shook his head again. “No, said he'd come for my family but the truth is I don't have any. The job pays well enough, and... I didn't have any other options.”

“What's your name?”

“Marcus,” the large man answered.

“Well, Marcus, you could kill me I guess. And go back to Roxxon and Hugh Jones. It'd be the easy choice. Your life could just, like, continue on the way it's been going. You'll probably get offed by an Avenger or the Punisher sooner or later. Or...”

He cocked his head at the ocean mutely, squinted from the glare of the sun on the water, then turned to look at her. His eyes were a warm brown.

“Or you could make your life really difficult, and not kill me. You could even help me, go on the run with me, if you wanted. That's another option.” She offered him a small smile, and he returned the gun to his holster. He didn't say yes right away, but then again, she would reflect months later when they ducked into a ramen shop together somewhere on the outskirts of Tokyo, he never actually said no either.

+

Darcy returned home from the Avengers tower in the early afternoon. She stood in the doorway of her bedroom for a few minutes, staring at her bed and reminiscing dreamily about everything that had happened there in the last twenty-four hours.

Sex with Bucky had been incredible, but that much she had expected. Talking with Bucky, starting to really learn who he was, waking up in the middle of the night to feel his broad chest wrapped over her back, his breath tickling her neck, that had been... something else completely. She felt something warm and solid settle inside her at the memory; this was a man who'd already begun putting down roots in her life. Normally she'd panic about feelings like this blooming up inside her so early on, but all Darcy felt was calm. Rooted. Steady.

She flopped down on the mussed sheets, sighing happily. The metal frame of her bed had rolled away from the wall as a result of her and Bucky's activities, and with idle curiosity she rolled over, peering down into the gap between the mattress and the wall. She gasped.

Nestled between two plastic boxes containing summer clothes was a cherry-red, vinyl bowling bag. She stood up, pulling the bed further into the center of the room, then tugged on the handles, wiggling it until it was loosened from its surroundings. She yanked it up and placed it on the bed. Darcy could count on one hand the times she'd gone bowling in her life. She did, however, happen to know someone who was quite a fan of the sport. Snatches of what Darcy had half-listened to Brigid saying last night returned to her. She sat, peering at the bag with distrust, for half a minute, before she unzipped it and pulled out the marbled, emerald green ball inside. It felt oddly light, considering the small text engraved near the finger holes told her it was a ten-pounder. She shook it carefully; a rattling sound came from within.

She studied the ball for a second, then she saw it. There was a perfectly straight hairline fracture running along its diameter. She inserted her fingers into the three holes on one side, gripped the other in her free hand, and twisted with all her might.

It stuck for a second, and Darcy groaned, then renewed her efforts. The two halves of the ball separated at last, and in the hollowed-out interior she found a cheap brick-style cellphone, a piece of paper with a chemical formula written on it, and a ziploc baggie containing a handful of glowing yellow crystals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **lifetaker: murderer**  
> 
> I got lost down a '90s music video rabbit hole after watching [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE&ab_channel=BeastieBoysVEVO). Just so much great stuff from that era. Sigh.
> 
> P.S. We have a Macguffin! Because no noir worth its salt is complete without one. Normally they're supposed to show up earlier than this in the story but, eh. Better late than never? :)
> 
> P.P.S. I'm home sick with Bronchitis, so if you're reading this and enjoying it so far (or even if you aren't), leave a comment and let me know? It would bring immense happiness to a very sick gal.


	10. mean-medicine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Mirror, mirror on the wall | Tell me where the bombs will fall"
> 
> Arcade Fire, _Black Mirror_

Darcy felt like she spent most of the next day, Wednesday, on the subway. She rode into Manhattan in the morning, sleepwalking through her duties for Jane. She received a text from Bucky around eleven, and met him in the lobby. They walked around aimlessly, her arm hanging comfortably in the crook of his elbow as they chatted, then bought gyros from a street cart before eating together in a nearby park. He regaled her with stories about his and Steve's childhood until she laughed so hard iced tea came out her nose, which only made her laugh harder. Even Bucky, who'd been flirtatious but had maintained a certain element of collected cool up until that point, lost it at the sight of tea splattered down the front of her shirt. 

Seeing him look so carefree, his mouth pulled back in a wide, toothy guffaw, his eyebrows raised in shock and amusement, made him seem younger, less roughened to her. She felt her heart race at how attractive it was. He pulled a napkin from the bag their wraps had come in, and wiped the remaining liquid from the shirt fabric stretched across her breasts with excessive fastidiousness and a mischievous glint in his eye. Things got a little less silly after that, and once back in the tower, they ducked into a supply closet for a few minutes of what he called “some light heavy petting.”

Afterwards she had to haul ass to make it back across the river to the Black Cat on time, sneaking in through the kitchen just two minutes before her shift was scheduled to begin. She changed hastily in the bathroom and although Annette scowled over her glasses at Darcy with disapproval, no reprimand followed.

She didn't get out of the diner until some time around eight, at which point she rushed home to grab the bag then hurried back to her local subway station, sending a few quick texts to Jessica as she descended the stairs to the Manhattan-bound platform.

+

Jessica inspected the three items, then the bowling ball itself, with avid interest.

“It seems like a lot of work,” she griped, “Hasn't your roommate ever heard of a safe deposit box?”

“I'm guessing no,” Darcy snarked, “And anyways, I think she probably wanted as few eyes as possible on this.”

Jessica offered a beer to Darcy, which she accepted, then pulled one from the fridge for herself. The two women sat at Jessica's kitchen table as Darcy recounted the details of the strange phone call she'd received from Brigid. She excluded the other activities that had been happening concurrently.

“Huh.” Jessica slouched down in her chair, peeling at the wet label of her beer. She picked up the phone and turned it on. It chimed cheerily. She opened the contacts list and scrolled through it. “Hold on a second,” she uttered under her breath. She rose and crossed the apartment to her desk office, pulling two pieces of notebook paper from a drawer and returning to the table.

"What's the damage?"

Jessica pointed at one list. "Brigid's escort service clients." She pointed at the other. "People buying from Brigid. Mostly weed, sometimes a little E. Read me the first number in the contacts.” Darcy did so, and Jessica's eyes scanned both lists. “Yep, there he is, on both. Okay, read the next one.” They continued on this way through all ten of the contacts.

“Why so few?” Darcy wondered aloud.

“Going by these lists? That phone was _exclusively_ for escort clients who were also buying from her. You know who shows up on both? Hugh Jones III. Who, as we know, owns and operates Roxxon Oil  & Energy. Which seems like a pretty likely source of...” Jessica lifted the baggie full of glowing crystals to the light, inspecting them, “...uh, whatever this is.”

“How can we find out for sure? What do we do if it is?”

“Well,” Jessica answered slowly, taking a drag from her beer while she considered, “I think we need to find out what this formula is. You don't happen to know anyone, like, sciencey, do you?”

Darcy smiled. “I think _I_ have an idea.”

+

A knock on the door disturbed the tranquility of Hugh Jones' office. He glanced longingly at his spot by the window, but he was in the middle of going through an important document and didn't want to lose his train of thought. He sighed, and ground his teeth together.

“Yeah,” he growled towards the door. It opened, and unfortunate goon's partner stepped one foot inside the office, keeping most of his body in the hallway. “Sorry to interrupt sir, I know you wanted to be kept up-to-date so just thought I'd let you know nobody's heard anything about Marcus or the girl.”

“You think they're together?” Hugh grunted.

“Hard to say, sir. Could be. Could just be a coincidence, or Marcus in the middle of something that won't allow for open communication.”

Hugh's jaw pulsed as he gnashed his molars together with even more force, his face going red as he sat staring at the nervous-looking goon in the doorway. At last, he said only, “Got it. Keep me appraised.”

“Yes sir,” the underling said quietly, closing the door behind him. Hugh looked down at the spreadsheets on his desk. So she was out of his grasp. For now. At least the cops wouldn't be looking for her, not with the healthy donation he'd just made to the chief commissioner's new anti-drug campaign. None of it would matter soon anyway, not with the money this early stock-market information was going to make him. He was going to be fucking untouchable. A god. He picked up his phone, made a note to email the CFO to talk about switching up the company's options, then returned to reading the report.

Hugh Jones III was filthy rich. But he wasn't above cutting corners to make himself a little richer.

+

“Hey, uh, Doctor Banner? You got a minute?” It was Thursday morning, Jane was curled up on her lab couch sleeping off an all-night science bender, and Darcy was hanging in the doorway of Bruce's laboratory, having knocked softly and gotten no response. He looked up from the microscope where he'd had one eye pressed to the lens.

“Oh, Miss Lewis! Sorry, didn't hear you knock.”

“C'mon doc, we've been through this, call me Darcy,” she grinned.

“Okay,” he said equanimously, “But you've gotta call me Bruce.”

She nodded, and took a step into his lab. Then another. “Bruce, I... I was online the other day, and I, uh, found this forum. Like, a chat board or something. They were discussing a chemical compound but everyone was being really weird about it, wouldn't say exactly what it did. I wondered if, um, maybe you could take a look at it?”

As she spoke, she took several more steps until she was standing on the other side of Bruce's table. He squinted at her dubiously, then down at the paper in her hand. Shrugging, he reached for it, then grabbed his glasses from the table and pushed them onto his nose. His eyes scanned the formula written there, peering at the drawn atomic model under it with visible unease, then he looked back to Darcy.

“Darcy. Tell me where you got this.” His voice was serious, and he was glaring at her with suspicion.

“I told you,” she said.

“Now tell me the truth,” he replied urgently.

“I... I... I don't remember the website. I was just looking for cat memes, maybe it was on Facebook,” she stuttered.

He pulled off his glasses, rubbed his face with his hand, and handed her back the piece of paper. Pointing at it, he said, “That's some really dangerous stuff, and it's not information the general public should have access to. I don't want you to show that to anyone else, and as soon as you possibly can, send me a link to the website where you _actually_ found it. Okay?”

He was completely focused on her, staring intently. “Yeah, okay. I will. Just... what is it?” she asked.

“It's the formula for Nitramene,” he answered. “It's a recipe, essentially. For a very destructive, very dangerous bomb. You should... Be careful with that, Darcy.”

She nodded, her face drained of color, and beat a hasty retreat from his lab.

+

“We gotta get in there. To the headquarters. Expose this,” was Jessica's response on Friday morning, when Darcy reported what Bruce had told her. Darcy had sent her a text the night before, too exhausted from Thursday Worst Day to make the ride back into Manhattan or explain to Jessica what she'd learned.

“Yeah, but... how?” Darcy asked, leaning back into the stained orange cushion.

Jessica snorted from her slouched position against the couch's opposite arm. “You kidding me? I'm the master of disguise, baby. Watch this.”

She disappeared into her bedroom and reappeared seconds later. The only difference Darcy could discern was that she was wearing a wire-framed pair of glasses.

“That's it? Not even a wig?” she asked dubiously.

“I don't need a wig! Clark Kent didn't need a wig. Besides, I have certain... gifts that will help me, uh, _talk_ my way in.”

“What will I do?”

Jessica gave her a once-over, not even attempting to hide her bemusement at the idea of Darcy helping. “You'll sit pretty somewhere, I don't know. Go about your life. Let the professional handle this.”

“No way!” Darcy protested. “I'm helping. You're gonna need a getaway car, aren't you? I can drive it.”

Jessica was shaking her head as she left the room, and returned a second later with a platinum blonde wig perched precariously over her own hair. “Nuh-uh, no way. I don't need a getaway car, and I work best alone.”

“That wig is a travesty, it's obviously fake,” Darcy answered sullenly, sinking lower into the couch.

+

Jessica got as far as sub-level three, where the basement laboratories were, with her mocked up company ID, grandma glasses, lab coat, and her excellent, very convincing wig (Darcy was being ridiculous, she thought, as she scratched an itchy spot near the nape of her neck while the elevator descended to the research and development floor).

She'd taken about ten steps in what she'd hoped was the right direction before she heard a very deep voice behind her ring out. “Stop right there, that's far enough Miss Jones.” Jones was not the last name she'd chosen for her fake Roxxon card. Fuck.

She turned, hunched defensively. There were three guards standing about twenty feet away, and they all had guns trained on her. Double fuck.

“Sorry, who is Miss Jones? I'm Doctor Holmes,” she tried. The guard on the right shook his head, and the one in the middle answered, “Cute alias. We're going to need you to come with us, now.”

Jessica sighed, slumping her shoulders, and raised her hands to concede defeat when she heard more guards entering the hallway from behind her. She turned, and sure enough, they were armed with pistols as well. Game's up, she thought.

“Okay, okay. Fine. I'm going,” she grumbled, as she turned and passed the guards, their guns trained on her, then walked in front of them as they all made their way to the elevator.

On the ground floor one of the men grabbed her arm when she turned in the direction of the lobby's front doors, and muttered, “Let's not make a scene, Miss Jones.” She ripped her arm out of his loose grasp angrily, glaring at him, but complied when they ushered her through a few unremarkable hallways before stopping at an unlabeled metal door towards the back of the building.

She exited into an abandoned alley, and three men followed, shutting the door behind them. One lifted a night stick from his belt, another unholstered a taser which he raised towards her, and the third pulled out two sets of brass knuckles, pulling them over his fingers before flexing his hands into menacing, metal-topped fists.

Triple fuck.

+

Darcy leaped up from Jessica's desk chair, where she'd been waiting since she returned from her shift, when the chair's owner busted into the apartment on Friday evening. Jessica had a busted lip, there was a tear in the leg of her jeans and another down the sleeve of her leather jacket, and her disguise was gone.

“What happened?” Darcy exclaimed, trailing behind Jessica as she stumbled towards the bathroom. She flinched sympathetically as the woman wet the corner of an old wash cloth, dabbing carefully at the tender, bloodied skin of her lip.

“I got made,” she growled.

Darcy sighed, and sat down on the toilet seat while she observed Jessica cleaning her wounds. “Should've had a getaway car,” she said, eyebrows lifted guilelessly. She gave Jessica a small, ironic smile in the mirror but all she got in return was a dirty look from Jessica's reflection.

“Okay, sorry, sorry. But... I have an idea. Another one. Maybe a better one.”

“Does it involve your participation?” Jessica grit out, as she lifted her shirt to assess the dark bruises already spreading along her ribs and midsection.

“Eh, yeah. Kind of. I have a friend. She's sort of... unique. I met her in high school, back in Illinois. I think she might be able to help us get into Roxxon after hours, and undetected.” Jessica turned, wincing as she leaned against the sink, and quirked an eyebrow down at Darcy.

“She's good people, I swear. It's just... how do you feel about, um... mutants?” Darcy asked, leaning her elbows on her knees and peering up at Jessica expectantly.

Jessica barked out a harsh laugh, and dropped her head back against the mirror. “Mutants. Yeah. Got nothin' against mutants. So what's this freak's shtick?”

Darcy grinned, bouncing slightly on the seat with excitement. “Okay, well. Her name is Kitty Pryde. And she can walk through walls.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **mean-medicine: tough; hard**  
>   
> 
> There are few albums that scream "noir" more to me than Arcade Fire's Neon Bible. Criminally underrated. Love this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXuymDSGCko&ab_channel=ArcadeFireVEVO) but fair warning the music video for it is weird AF. 
> 
>    
> (Although if you want to get all artsy about it, and I usually do because I'm an artsy gal, it's obviously an homage to the Expressionist movement in 1920's German cinema, which is where a lot of the classic film noir visual tropes/directors originated. I guess this chapter is brought to you by film nerdism. Check with your local arthouse theater to see if Film Nerdism is the right choice for you, and always watch responsibly.)
> 
>  
> 
> Oh yeah, and I threw Shadowcat into the mix because... I'm going for that "everything but the kitchen sink" feel, at this point. To be honest, the kitchen sink may even make a cameo at some point.


	11. busted flush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You don't know what it's like, you don't have a clue | If you did you'd find yourselves doing the same thing too"
> 
> Judas Priest, _Breaking the Law_

Darcy bounced out of bed that Saturday. Counting the weeks, she realized it'd been a little over three since she'd met Bucky in an elevator and Brigid had skipped out on her. And although a lot had happened in that time, what was more important to her on that morning was the date: the thirty-first of October. She danced around her room, her celebratory spirit fueled by Bobby Pickett's smooth baritone crooning about monster mashes and graveyard smashes.

But what costume to wear to work? She rifled through a plastic bag stuffed with odds and and ends that she'd excavated from the back of her closet. After great deliberation, she pulled out a set of black clip-on cat ears and a black detachable tail. How very appropriate, Darcy reflected, considering her and Jessica's plans for the next evening.

+

The diner was slammed for most of her shift; first there was stream of families coming in to recover from their trick-or-treating marathons, and then after they'd mostly shuffled out a second wave of pre-gaming twenty-somethings filled up the place. Darcy spent the entire day on her feet, and had so many big groups she could be forgiven for not noticing that Bucky had been sitting at the counter until he'd been there for well over an hour.

When she finally had a moment to herself, she leaned against the silverware cabinets at the back of the place, gulping down ice water. She almost jumped out of her skin when she noticed him. He was looking directly at her, sitting between two grizzled truckers, his deep-set blue eyes soft with affection. He smirked at her reaction when their eyes met, and waved one hand, then returned to his book. At the same time, her four-top at table three waved to her, signaling for the check. So Darcy blew him a kiss, then succumbed to the chaos of serving for another hour without repose.

The rush never really died down, but one of her fellow waitresses showed up to start her shift and relieve her, so Darcy happily counted out her tips, waved at the stalwart Annette, who nodded from the table where she was taking an order, and swung around the counter. She placed her hands over Bucky's eyes and whispered in his ear, “Guess who?”

“In that getup? Felix the Cat, maybe?” he teased. He was referring to her dark slim-cut jeans, the form-fitting black turtleneck tucked into them, her black loafers, and completing the costume, her tail and ears. She blinked her eyes, painted with thick black tails at the corners, and pouted at him in feigned offense.

“Felix who? I'm a cat burglar!” she protested.

“See? I knew you were trouble,” he answered, swinging himself around on the stool and pulling her between his spread legs. He chastely grazed her ruby-painted lips with his own.

“It's been a while, darlin'. I've been missing you.” She smiled against his mouth, then grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the front door.

They strolled towards her apartment building leisurely, and she caught him sneaking glances at her chest several times before she finally snarked, “Maybe you should take a picture. Might last longer?” He stopped, spinning her towards him and into his body, then sneaked his hands inside her open pea coat to lay flat against her back.

“I can't help it,” he breathed, leaning into her, “That top is...”

“It's a turtleneck! It's not even showing anything!” she laughed.

“Something you kids forget these days, what you don't show can be even sexier than what you do,” he smiled, his thumbs brushing the sides of her breasts as he rested his hands on her ribs. “You got any big plans tonight, kitten?”

“Just staying in. I have to work another double tomorrow,” she sighed regretfully, pecking his cheek then tugging on his hand to get him moving again.

“You want some company?” he asked, swinging his arm around her shoulders and pulling her into his side as they walked down the sidewalk.

“Yes please. I can't promise you I'll be very entertaining though, I'm beat.” She glanced up at him through her eyelashes.

“Guess I'll just have to be fun enough for the two of us,” he grinned. “It's a lot to take on. Big shoes to fill.”

“I believe in you,” she answered serenely as she tucked her head against his chest and and wrapped her arm around his back, letting him steer them home.

+

She wasn't lying, she really was dog-tired, which is why she was currently pinned against the wall, her legs draped over Bucky's arms, his cock hot and hard and perfect inside her as his hands kept her positioned exactly where he wanted her. When he'd started sliding those hands up under her pajamas, sneaking kisses around her neck, about ten minutes into Rosemary's Baby, she'd leaned her body back against his, grinding against his jeans-clad erection, and rolled her head back on his arm that was serving as her pillow. Looking up into his eyes as he'd curled himself over her body, she'd whispered, “Dude, I'm exhausted.”

“I'll do all the work,” he'd promised, then slid his hands down the front of her sweat pants. She'd turned her head and met his mouth, moaning happily when he rubbed her clitoris just the way she liked.

“Yeah?” he'd breathed into her mouth.

“Oh yes,” she had sighed.

He paused in his thrusting, so deep inside her that she knew she'd walk a little funny the next day, and adjusted his grip. Then he went back to working her over, holding her against the wall, his unyielding chest pushing her breasts up towards her chin. She was practically folded in half, but she trusted him completely to hold her weight, and she let her head fall back, whimpering at the sensation of his skin on hers, the burn of his cock stretching her open, the way he brushed against her clit with every inward stroke.

He moaned wantonly in her ear, giving a particularly forceful thrust, then lifted her up and off of him, turning and crossing the room. He tossed her, and she giggled when she bounced once then settled in the middle of the bed. He crawled up her body, meeting her mouth in a sloppy kiss as he guided himself back inside her. Big hands cradling her hips, he pulled her body close, thrusting slowly as they both groaned from the sweet torture.

“C'mon honey, time to come now. Come for me, kitten,” he grit out through his teeth.

“Just... my clit...” she whimpered from her prone position, eyes sliding closed at the rising tension in her muscles. She guided his metal thumb to press down on her and he stroked her in ever-faster, ever-tighter concentric circles until with a sharp whine her inner muscles clamped down on him, her toes curled as she hitched her legs up around his waist, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him as close as she could. Her hips jerked against his as she shivered, riding out wave after wave of her orgasm.

He gasped at the feel of her pulsing around his cock, and buried his face in her neck, thrusting in to the hilt and then freezing, hands squeezing her ass he held her close to him and came with a rasping howl.

They lay together for a long moment, panting and dripping sweat, then he gently kissed the bruise he'd sucked onto her neck. He pulled out of her, leaving momentarily and returning with a warm wash cloth to clean them up, mumbling into her skin, “Happy Halloween, Darcy.”

“Mmm, this is my favorite one ever,” she mumbled back, already drifting off to sleep as he tucked her body into his, tangling his legs and arms with hers and humming contentedly in response.

+

Darcy met Kitty at a Starbucks in Jessica's neighborhood where she'd asked her old classmate to meet so they could catch up before meeting the detective at her office. Darcy had an ulterior motive for this; the Kitty of her memory was a pretty shy person, and she wanted a chance to warn her old classmate about the caustic manner of their future partner-in-crime.

Unfortunately, she hadn't had time to change out of her cat costume before heading into Manhattan when she'd finished her Sunday double shift. But all black was appropriate, she figured. They were breaking into a giant office building after dark. Her getup felt right.

Kitty's eyes got wide when she saw her. The petite woman cocked her head, her eyebrows drawing together. “Hey, Darcy. Uh... Long time no see,” she said, as the women hugged.

“Hey! Thank you so much for doing this. I know it's crazy, but...”

Kitty offered her a small smile. “No, I get it. This is important. I'm happy to help.”

Darcy nodded, relieved, and they headed into the corporate coffee shop. As they waited on line, she asked, “Did you get down okay? How's Westchester, how's the school?”

“The ride in was great, actually. The leaves are changing and it's beautiful this time of year. Everything's fine at the school, I've started teaching applied robotics and advanced physics along with computer science,” Kitty offered shyly.

“Hey, that's awesome! You always were a brainiac in high school,” Darcy responded. Kitty nodded, looking her up and down, and seemed to be mulling over something. Darcy sighed. “You're wondering about my outfit.”

Her diminutive friend blushed and let out a small, relieved laugh, then confessed, “When I first saw you, I thought maybe it was a joke. Like you were making fun of my code name or something.”

“No, never!” Darcy cried. “Dude, I love the alias “Shadowcat”. Are you kidding me? It's so badass. No, it's just... it's Halloween weekend and I'm working at this diner where we normally have to wear this ugly, like, retro costume but if we wear a Halloween costume we're kind of off the hook so...”

“Ah. Gotcha,” Kitty said, nodding politely, then turned to order her drink. As they walked to Jessica's apartment, they chatted about mutual friends from Illinois.

Finally, Darcy said, “Um... Kitty. I'm really grateful that you're helping us. But Jessica... She can, um, be a little, uh, she's got some bite to her. She's a good detective, I think so anyway, but kind of a tough lady.”

Kitty gave her another small smile. “I'll be okay Darce, but thanks for the heads up. I'm not quite the retiring wall flower I was back in Deerfield.”

Darcy breathed a sigh of relief. “Whew. Okay. Good to hear. So. Shall we?”

“Let's shall,” Kitty answered, nodding and following her up the stairs and through the door of Jessica's building.

+

“Explain to me again why you're dressed like that, Lewis?”

“Hey relax, all right? I came straight from work, and you may not realize this but it's Halloween weekend. I'm a cat burglar. It's appropriate, I was just getting into character.”

“As a bank robber from a kinky silent film? As a sad Catwoman cosplay? As a beatnik furry?”

“Laugh it up, Jones. What happens if there are security cameras in the labs?”

“You'll be recorded for all posterity looking like an idiot.”

“Um... sorry, not to team up with Jessica here, but... well, er, once I use my abilities and we're phasing, if there are cameras, we won't show up on the film...”

“Okay, you know what guys? It's been a long couple weeks. I'm tired. Half the people out on the street tonight will still be in costume. And I'm about to commit a felony. Just let me have this.”

"At least take off the tail."

"Ugh, fine. There. Happy? Tail stays behind."

“Good enough. That's enough chit-chat ladies, let's go do some corporate espionage.”

+

Bucky was well aware that following Darcy to her friend's apartment after her shift ended was a definite no-no according to culturally accepted dating norms of this century. But there'd been something about her shifty non-answer when he'd asked her that morning, while she was getting ready for work, what her plans were for the evening that had ticked off the warning bells in his brain.

It's not that he didn't trust his girl, it's just... she hadn't told him about the break-in at her apartment until she'd wanted him to know. He respected her boundaries, he did, but at the same time, he wasn't entirely confident Darcy understood what kind of dangerous characters were out there. The thought of something happening to her, something he couldn't undo, robbed the breath from his lungs. He was crazy about this twist, they'd been doing whatever this thing was they were doing for less than a month and he was about ready to start picking out wallpaper together.

So he did a bad thing to make sure a worse thing didn't happen. He followed her. He was good at following people without detection. HYDRA had made sure that he was better than good, really. Bucky was the best. Which is why Darcy didn't see him watch her leave the diner, didn't see him in the next car over on the subway ride into Manhattan, didn't see him slouched against a stoplight across the street from when she greeted a tiny brunette with whom she'd embraced familiarly, nor when he watched her enter the midtown building where Jessica Jones lived, then leave fifteen minutes later with the other women.

And she definitely didn't seen him lurking in the shadows in the alley behind the Roxxon headquarters building, hands clenching with anxiety, as he watched them pass by him, clasp hands, and step through a brick wall. He stood there fuming, did a circuit around the building, then returned to the alley, feeling useless and half-crazed with fear.

About twenty minutes later the tall, dark-haired private eye burst through the wall still firmly grasping the hand of Darcy's tiny friend and after speaking together in hushed, frenzied voices for a moment, they made to run towards the street. When he realized his girl wasn't with them he stepped out of the shadows, grabbing Jones' arm as she was sprinting past.

He swung her around, using her own momentum against her as she landed against the building wall with an, “Oomph!”

“Where is she?” he growled furiously.

Jessica did not pretend not to know what he was talking about. Her dark eyes went wide, and they fearfully rolled over towards the street. Kitty lingered for a second at the entrance of the alley, and Jessica shook her head at her, so the woman turned and ran. “They grabbed her,” she said, panting, then tried to duck and weave around him. Bucky prided himself on being a chivalrous man, but rage was blinding him so this time when he grabbed her arm, he used his mechanized left hand to prevent her leaving.

Except that Jessica pulled out of his grasp with what seemed to him like hardly any effort, glowering at him then spinning and roundhouse kicking him in the solar plexus so hard he felt the side of the nearby metal dumpster crumple as he landed against it. He looked up at her in shock, and they stared at each other for mutely for a second. Then recognition dawned on her face. She hurried over, pulling the leather glove from his hand while he was still too dazed from the blow to stop her.

“Shit. Shit. I knew it. I know who you are. I don't want any fucking trouble with you dude, but there is about to be an army of cops surrounding this place and I _cannot_ be here when that happens,” she muttered. Then she pulled her arm back, forming a fist, and punched Bucky so hard that for a minute, maybe two, he knew only darkness.

When he came to, Jones was gone, and he could hear the sirens of an approaching police squad. He shambled across the street, dragging himself up a fire escape and watching helplessly as the police, wearing bullet-protection armor and carrying rifles, entered the building. He waited, every nerve in his body wound to a fever pitch of tension, and then some minutes later a female officer exited, guiding Darcy by the cuffed hands behind her back.

She was still wearing the set of cat ears, he noted from his perch. She was biting her red lip, and by the way her shoulders were hunched and shaking he knew she was scared. Then his ability to rationally process what he was seeing cut out as the officer placed her hand atop Darcy's head, pushing her into the back seat of a squad car and out of his line of sight, and panic flooded his senses.

+

Hugh Jones gazed down at the flashing red and blue lights of the cars on the street, far below his office, and sneered with ugly triumph. So the little hussy had sent her roommate and that detective to try and trip him up. He'd gotten the last laugh though. Nobody had security like Roxxon. This place was a fucking Fort Knox, and a couple of girls weren't going to get past that. Not even with the help of some filthy mutant.

Unfortunate goon's partner knocked at his door then entered without waiting for a response. Hugh snorted with ire, and turned to berate the man, but pulled up at the victorious smile on his face.

“Well?” he barked.

“Cops caught one. The roommate. Darcy Lewis. She's in custody now, they've taken her downtown.”

He nodded, rubbing his thick gut with satisfaction. “Put someone at the station. I want her grabbed the second she gets out. What's the status on the detective's apartment?”

“Anders just called in,” the goon's smile widened, “She had a safe in her bedroom closet but we cracked it, easy. That girl of yours hid the formula and the sample inside a fucking bowling ball. Marcus musta missed it somehow, when he tossed her place.”

Jones let out a sigh of relief. “So we got everything?” he asked, just to cover his bases.

“They're on their way back with it now. Anders also said something 'bout some lists; the girl's other clients and her buyers. Your name's on both. That detective really hung the red light on you.”

Jones turned back to the window. “Doesn't matter. Let her spin her wheels. We got the stuff, we'll have the roommate soon enough. Everything's coming up Roxxon.” He indulged in a deep belly laugh then, which devolved into a villainous cackle. That detective bitch thought she could sneak into his company, not once, but twice? She had a sweet surprise waiting for her back home. Tit for tat, baby. Oh yeah. He had them now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **busted flush: somebody who got nabbed; down on his luck; a sad sack**  
>   
> 
> I've never watched the music video for this song before, I had no idea how truly silly and delightful it is. They shatter a man's glasses with the power of how hard they rock! If you've also never watched it, can I recommend [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L397TWLwrUU&ab_channel=JudasPriestVEV) as the gift you give yourself today?


	12. under glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So I think we've burned our bridges, but it's difficult to tell | I've been walking through the ashes, saying 'Didn't we do well?'"
> 
> Run the Jewels, _Job Well Done_

Bucky was at the 9th Precinct Police Station on Monday afternoon, waiting on the steps, when Natasha swung her motorcycle into an open spot nearby. He looked like a gargoyle, she thought, stone-faced and wrathful. As she crossed the street she noticed how shuttered and unreadable his eyes were; for a single, heart-breaking second she braced herself for the terrible possibility of putting the Winter Soldier down. Like she could. But she'd have to die trying.

He blinked, when she approached him, and sank his head into his hands. She saw his shoulders jerk forwards. When he looked up again, his eyes were red and shining with unshed tears. “She's inside, Nat,” he whispered.

“It's okay, Barnes. I brought the Stark Industries checkbook. Let's go pay her bail,” she said in her calmest, most assured voice. She gently laid a hand on his shoulder, and felt the sob that wracked his body.

“What if... what if something's already happened...” He shuddered again.

“It's just the NYPD. She's in a holding cell, that's all. This is not great for her, from a legal standpoint, but I don't think she's in any danger.”

“ _Just_ the NYPD?” he roared, standing up and turning away from the station, pacing in front of her. “Really, Romanov? Like how it was _just_ SHIELD, until, oh wait, hello! Turns out it was actually HYDRA? How can you say that to me? When she's in there? God knows who's working for them, who's on the inside... When it's all just... When I have no _control_ over any of this... She didn't even tell me...” He turned, and punched the wall of the station so hard with his right arm that when he pulled his fist back, crumbled pieces of mortar fell from his shredded skin and the bloody dent he'd left.

Natasha sighed. “Calm down, Barnes,” she said quietly. “This isn't going to help her. Get your shit together, because she's just a girl. She's a tough girl, but she's obviously not a professional, and she's still figuring herself out. So she's going to be shaken when they release her, and she's going to need your support.”

He leaned his head against the wall, and let out one last anguished, pitiful yowl. Natasha crossed her arms and waited. Finally, he turned to her and nodded wordlessly. She returned the gesture and pivoted on her heel, entering the station.

+

Kitty Pryde was sitting, muscles tensed, on a stained chair in a seedy motel room somewhere in Jersey City. She could not relax. She pulled the curtain back for the dozenth time, letting in the mid-afternoon light, and peered out at the parking lot.

“Stop doing that,” Jessica groused at her, from where she sat at the table across the room. 

“I just wanted to see...”

“Yeah well there's nothing to see, and every time you open the curtain you draw attention to our room from anyone who might be looking for something noticeable like that. So. Stop. Doing. That.”

“Sorry!” Kitty squeaked, releasing the fabric and letting it fall closed once more. “What're we going to do now, though?”

“Stay holed up a few more hours. Nap, if you can. I don't know about you but I couldn't sleep for shit last night. When it gets dark you'll rent a car and drive back upstate, and I'll head back to Manhattan, maybe wait until tomorrow if I feel like I've got eyes on me.” Jessica cracked open the seal on the flask of Jim Bean she'd bought for herself at the bodega near their hideout, and took a healthy swallow of the stuff.

She regarded Kitty, who was observing this, with a look of calculation, and extended the flask in her direction. Kitty shook her head and clasped her hands together to stop herself from looking out through the curtain again. “And Darcy?” she asked.

Jessica shrugged. “She's definitely getting charged, probably with burglary. I don't have enough money for her bail. Do you?” As she spoke, she fidgeted with the label of her liquor bottle and shifted in her seat, refusing to meet Kitty's eyes.

“Yeah,” Kitty said finally, “I think I could bail her out.”

Jessica snorted. “'S'not like we can just mosey on in the front door though, can we? Those guards definitely saw our faces. We're not exactly innocent bystanders here, Pryde.”

“It seemed like... Sorry, I'm sure you're good at your job. But it seemed like they knew we were coming.” Kitty spoke slowly, cautiously, watching the woman she barely knew for a reaction.

The detective groaned, took a long pull from the bottle, and sank her head onto her arms. “They probably did. I tried to sneak in on Friday, like with a disguise, like I'm one of Charlie's Angels or something. They caught me before I even hit the labs. Had to fight my way out of that mess. God, I'm usually a lot better at this.” Her confession was muffled, but Kitty thought it sounded regretful. When Jessica raised her head again, Kitty was looking at her with sympathy.

“We would've been okay if Darcy hadn't tried to grab those crystals, even after they pulled their guns on us. I told her my power only worked with direct, skin-to-skin contact,” she sighed.

“Don't...” Jessica started, swallowing heavily. “Don't blame this on her. It was stupid as hell, but it was goddamn brave. What she tried to do. Giving herself up so we could get outta there. I don't know that I woulda had the guts to do it.”

Kitty nodded sadly in agreement, staring down at the designs her shoes made when she slid them through the cheap carpeting.

+

Darcy signed her signature hastily on the documents where the officer pointed, after the judge had set her bail and they'd brought her back to the station, still in handcuffs. Her wrists were chafed from where'd they restrained her, her neck was aching from an entire night spent sleeping vertically in a jail cell full of strangers, and her eyes were burning from the strain of not crying, not allowing anyone to see how utterly freaked out she was.

The cop led her to the front of the station, where Natasha was leaning, her face a sphinx-like enigma, against a bulletin board. Bucky was standing beside her, every muscle in his body taut and vibrating with visible anger, leaning forward and straining to see her. When their eyes met she saw him sag slightly with relief, and then it was like a veil passed over his face and she had no idea what he was thinking.

His metal fingers were like a vise around her arm, and they remained there as they walked out of the station together. They remained there on the strained, silent drive to the Avengers tower. They remained there as the three of them rode up the elevator to floor ninety-five, then passed down a hallway and into an apartment whose spartan furnishings led Darcy to believe it was Bucky's. Exchanging a glance full of unspoken understanding with Natasha, she turned in the direction of the kitchen as he herded Darcy towards the bathroom, following her in and closing the door behind him.

“Tell me you're okay,” he ground out, his voice guttural.

That was all it took. Darcy had tried so hard to be strong, not to be scared of all the guns that had been pointed in her direction in the last twenty-four hours or the stern, uncaring faces everywhere she'd looked. She hadn't cried. Not from the rush of terrified adrenaline while they sneaked through the darkened halls of the corporation, nor the frustration at being caught when they were so damn close to proving that Roxxon was the source of the Nitramene. But seeing Bucky look at her with that gutted expression was too much. She pulled the cat ears out of her hair, flinging them into the sink, then raised her hands to cover her face, whimpered, and began to sob.

“No, no, sweetheart. Don't do that, please,” he whispered, pulling her into his body immediately, his hands warm and soothing as he rubbed wide circles across her back. She tried to get back on top of it and only ended up crying harder, and then his hand was pulling her face into his shoulder, kissing her lightly on the temple. Later, Darcy would not be able to say how long they stood that way. It felt like a miniature eternity, an endless purging of her terror and shock from the prior evening's events. Finally, she raised her head to meet his eyes, sniffling. His own eyes were red and she felt guilt punch her in the gut at the sight.

“I'm so, so sorry Bucky,” she exhaled. He nodded, wiping at her tear-stained cheeks with his flesh fingers then handing her a tissue. She wheezed with alarm at the dried blood on his hand but he shook his head, saying softly, "Don't worry about it. Already healed." When she finished wiping her face and blowing her nose, he met her eyes, his thumb still rubbing at her now-dry cheeks. He snaked his metal arm around the small of her back, bending her over and brushing his lips over hers gently. She sighed gently with relief and the comforting feel of him, holding her.

“You scared the hell outta me, kitten,” he mumbled. “C'mon. Let me make you some tea, then Natalia and I need you to tell us exactly what happened.”

“You drink tea?” she asked, laughing wetly.

He tilted his head, fixing her with an ironic look. “I'm not a total caveman you, know,” he sniffed, then grinned wryly when she laughed again in earnest.

+

“Bruce told me you'd stumbled upon Nitramene, although he said you were lying about where you'd found it. I chose to believe that you would come to me if you needed my help. I suppose it would be useless, at this point, to tell you how stupid it was not to tell your friends, _the Avengers_ , that you had evidence suggesting Roxxon Oil & Energy was manufacturing a chemical capable of creating a five hundred yard blast radius as well as a gaping matter vacuum.” Natasha's tone was somewhere between joking and chagrined, after Darcy had told her what had gone down. “It didn't occur to you that taking down Roxxon might be above your pay-grade?” 

Darcy sighed, and looked down into her mug of lukewarm mint tea. “I don't know. I thought with Kitty's help...”

“I didn't say it was a terrible plan,” Natasha cut in. “But we could have helped you make it better. You didn't use every resource at your disposal. That was foolish.”

Darcy looked to Bucky, who nodded solemnly. “I'm sorry,” she whispered.

She felt a warm, delicate hand cover hers. “You're new at this, milaya. We make mistakes, we learn. Next time... you won't make this mistake,” she said generously.

“There's not going to be a next time.” Bucky's voice was low, his tone hushed, and it brokered no argument.

“And... that's my cue to leave,” Natasha answered, her gaze passing between the look of outrage on Darcy's face and the grim determination on Bucky's. She came around the kitchen island where they'd all been seated, and ran her hand over Darcy's hair, “We're all glad you're okay, Darcy.” Then, fixing Barnes with a look of warning, she turned and left the apartment.

+

“We couldn't grab her at the station, boss.” The voice of the unfortunate goon's partner was tinny and fractured, as though he were underground or in an elevator.

“Why,” Hugh Jones said with barely checked fury, the plastic of his phone squeaking as he squeezed it in his meaty paw.

“Sir... Two of the Avengers paid her bail, picked her up. They took her to Stark's tower. She's still there now.”

In Hugh's mind, he conjured up a vision of Iron Man's fists: merciless, gleaming red metal. He thought about every other idiot who'd gone up against Tony Stark, and how many of them lay now in a wooden kimono somewhere. He thought about that thing, the Hulk, he thought about the hard edges of Captain America's shield, and he thought about that viking alien with the big hammer.

“Which ones?” he grunted.

“The Russians, the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow,” the underling answered.

A harsh, grating growl of frustration was his response. He sat there, silently fuming for a moment, then said, “Drop the tail and spread the word that we leave her be. For now.”

He hung up the phone. Fine. He didn't have either of the dumb whores. But he still had the product back, and one of the guards told him they'd managed to grab that dumb detective bitch's camera, smash it to hell.

Just let them try to make a case without any evidence. And even if they did? Well, Hugh reassured himself, he had the best attorneys that money could buy.

+

“Bucky, I can't promise you that I won't ever get into this kind of trouble again. It kind of comes with the trade.”

“What trade, Darcy? Waitressing? Keeping records for Foster?”

“Bucky.”

“No, Darcy. No dice. This shit is dangerous. You coulda been killed!”

“I could be killed walking down the street. People are every day. My mom was. Just minding her business, hit by a car. The driver had a stroke. Nobody's fault. Bad things happen, and sometimes there's no one to blame. But something bad happened in my life, in my roommate's life, and there _was_ someone to blame. How could I just let that go?”

“Baby...”

“No, don't. I need you to understand this. I want to do this. I think I could be good at this. I'm gonna... I've been looking online, and I can get my Private Inspector's license in three years, if I can find an apprenticeship, someone to train me.”

“ _No_! No, Darcy, what is this? Are you crazy? Do you have a death wish? I can't let you do this.”

“...I'm sorry, you _what_?”

“You can't do this. If something happened...”

“No, no, no. _No_! You don't get to tell me what to do. It's not the thirties, Bucky, and I'm not your little housewife. I already have a colonel who loves to bark orders at me and I put a lot of space between him and me for that exact reason, so I don't need another commanding officer in my life, okay? I could be helping people! I could be making the world a better place, one where it's, y'know, _difficult_ for wealthy criminals to make scared young girls disappear!”

“It's not worth the risk, Lewis. You mean too much to me. I care about you, and this thing, between us...”

“I'm not asking you for permission!”

“Darcy, please. If this is the life you're choosing for yourself, I don't think I can... I can't support that.”

“I can't believe... You know what? Fine. Fine. I'm gonna go stay in Jane's apartment. Just... God _damn_ it Bucky. Fuck you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **under glass: in jail**  
>   
> 
> *whispers* I'm so sorry, here's an awesome [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uC35poq1Zs&ab_channel=RunTheJewels) to make it better...


	13. park the body

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There was no one to kiss | There was nothing to drink | Except some old rotten milk someone left in the sink"
> 
> Alkaline Trio, _Private Eye_

“Alright kid, Natasha tells me you have an interesting bedtime story for me.” Tony Stark was sitting in front of her. Tony Stark was talking to her. Iron man was talking to her.

Darcy shook herself from the starstruck daze she'd been stuck in since Tony sauntered into Jane's apartment, interrupting their breakfast. He'd poured himself a cup of the coffee Darcy had made, then sat at the table. Where he was still sitting, eyeing her with bored contempt.

Jane sighed. “Tony, you're freaking out my intern.”

“I...” she began.

“Yes. You. Something about Roxxon? This one is capable of speech, yes Natasha?” he shouted back at Natasha, who was leaning in the doorway of the kitchen.

She smirked. “As far as I'm aware.”

Darcy finally recovered herself, and once more recounted the events of October. Stark reacted in a manner not dissimilar to Natasha. “Well, kid, you got heart. I'll give you that. It's a big dumb masochistic heart, but... I know a thing or two about that.” He winked, then stood, grabbing a banana from Jane's counter and grinning impishly at her annoyed huff. 

He turned to leave, then paused at the door, calling over his shoulder, “Well?”

“Huh?” Darcy asked.

“You coming on your own feet, or you making Romanov carry you?”

“Cool it, Tony,” Natasha clucked at him.

“Hey, I wouldn't mind seeing it!” he protested.

“That's exactly why it'll never happen. Come on daragaya, we're going to pay a visit to your private investigator friend. Tony wants to get a look at the Nitramene formula and how it crystallizes. We're going to pass some on to Bruce as well. SHIELD has some old records about how to neutralize the chemical but we'd like to have a more reliable, up-to-date option.”

Darcy nodded, swallowed her coffee and rose to follow them. She waved at Jane, whose attention had already drifted back to the periodical in front of her. The elevator stopped at the lowest subterranean garage level, and the women followed Tony to a private car where a bulky, red-faced man was waiting.

“Your talk with Barnes didn't go so well last night,” Natasha commented lightly, as they walked.

“That guy's on a trip, he's stuck in the wrong decade,” Darcy mumbled sullenly.

Natasha huffed. “You're not wrong, but... Remember when I asked you to go easy on him? What part of your getting arrested and then breaking up with him would you qualify as complying with my simple request?” The corner of her mouth quirked up, and her eyes were lit with humor.

“You ever ask hi-him to go easy on me, Natasha?” Natasha's gaze became probing, and Darcy looked down at her feet, swallowing the lump in her throat. The perceptive spy must have heard the strain in Darcy's voice, and she definitely noticed the way her voice caught, because she nodded silently and didn't refer to Bucky again.

+

When they got to Jessica's apartment door, Darcy jolted with shock. The cardboard cover the private detective had been using in lieu of a glass pane was gone, and she could see into the office where Jessica was laying atop the desk, one flask-bearing hand swinging over the edge. She jackknifed into a sitting position when she heard them coming, and Darcy stared at her through the door for an awkward moment.

“Holy shit,” Jessica muttered, then called out, “You might as well come in, it's open. Not like it matters since there's a giant fucking hole in it.”

Darcy turned the handle and pushed the door inwards, Natasha and Tony following her.

“Uh, have I finally drunk past the point of no return or are Iron Man and Black Widow standing in my living room?” she demanded. She turned to Darcy, “Man, am I glad to see you. Thought maybe they sent you up the river after we split. Lewis, I'm... I, well, damn. That was a shitshow.”

Darcy figured that was about as close as she'd get to an apology, and she nodded gratefully. “It was my fault, really. It was stupid to try and grab those crystals. I couldn't let all three of us get nabbed because of my dumb choices.”

Jessica took a sip from her flask, then nodded. “It was also brave. But yeah, mostly stupid. So, uh, what's with the superhero house call?”

While they'd been speaking, Tony had been perusing the scant contents of her shelves, then had wandered into her kitchen and opened the fridge, snorting in disgust at its barren interior. He was currently checking out the view from her curtainless windows. “Heard you've got the formula for Nitramene. Sample too. We're gonna need that. You ladies have done, hm, good work but... it's probably time we bring in the big guns. Hey, you like living in this neighborhood? I've been looking at some property over here.”

“Please don't,” Jessica answered flatly from where she'd once again reclined on the desk. “This place is gentrified enough as is. Oh and yeah, the shit's all gone.”

Natasha, who had been hanging back by the door, advanced towards Jessica, her eyes narrowed. “What happened?” she asked in a sharp, brisk tone.

“Hell if I know. Look at my door, dude. Draw your own conclusions. Came back and my safe was destroyed, everything we got from Brigid O'Malley was gone. So... yeah. The gig is up, I guess.” She tilted the flask up and back, into her mouth, wiping her face when a drop spilled down her cheek.

Stark and Natasha shared a worried glance. Stark turned back to Jessica. “You get burgled often?”

“Oh, only about every three weeks or so. I could probably cut that down by half if my door weren't made of cardboard, but... you know. Assholes keep breaking the window. Whatever.”

“And you kept the evidence here, knowing this place was compromised?” Natasha pushed.

Jessica blew a raspberry at them, bending her knees and planting her feet on the desk. “They were in a safe!” she said, flinging one arm out to point to the shattered remains and laughing. “Hey, you know what, we tried. Lewis and me, we tried. We messed everything up but we gave it our all. Points for effort, huh?”

Darcy was staring at Jessica, her eyebrows drawn together in disillusionment, then she turned to Natasha. “Can I go home now?”

Natasha sighed, shared another glance with Tony. He nodded. “You need to stay at the tower for a while, Darcy. Someone was following us last night. Can't be sure exactly how many or who they're working for, but my money's on Roxxon.” She turned to Jessica. “You should be careful as well, investigator.”

“Ha!” Jessica said, punching the palm of her left hand with the fist of her right. “Let 'em come. I'd like to see them try to take me.”

“Okay, I'm bored now. Good look with your... hovel, Nancy Drew,” Tony snapped, before he promptly spun and left the apartment. Natasha gave Darcy a sympathetic rub on her arm, rolling her eyes, then followed him.

"Where's Kitty." Darcy hugged herself while she stood in front of Jessica's desk, trying to staunch the flow of disappointment.

"She's fine. Nice lady, glad I met her. She went back to her mansion full of rich kids."

“That's not... Whatever. We didn't mess everything up. We got Veronica to help Brigid,” Darcy said quietly.

“Big whoop!” Jessica laughed derisively. “It's been real, Lewis. Off to the Avengers palace with you. Let us hoi polloi get back to being trampled in peace, huh?”

Darcy could think of nothing to charitable say to that, so she bit down sharply on her tongue to keep from blurting out something she'd regret, then turned and left the apartment. She didn't bother to close the door behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **park the body: don't move; stand still; sit down, take a seat, take a load off**
> 
>  
> 
> Both versions of this song ([original](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OeTOS2VBVw&ab_channel=JessicaHarrison), [acoustic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_ZA9LPpAQo&ab_channel=JessicaHarrison)) are amazing: dark, angry, full of bitter defiance.


	14. win the wrist watch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tell me there’s something I can change | Recall I know what a sanctuary is | Help me deserve you, sing me praise"
> 
> Sharon Van Etten, _I Love You but I'm Lost_

Darcy grabbed the last box from the Stark Industries van Natasha had driven out to Queens for her, and crossed the sidewalk, entering the apartment building and taking the elevator to the third floor. The door to her new place was wide open when she entered, and Natasha had begun unpacking a box full of kitchen utensils.

“You really don't have to do that, Natasha. You've already helped me so much today.” Darcy dropped the box in the middle of the one-room apartment and whirled around, taking in her new home. Natasha dropped the last of the forks in the kitchenette drawer and crossed the small space, collapsing onto Darcy's mattress gracefully.

“It's a decent enough place for one person.” She spoke reflectively, eyes scanning the blank white walls. “Affordable. Close to the tower, which is nice. Close to the City College campus, even better. Harlem's supposed to have great food, as well. Clint recommended a good jerk chicken place for us to check out, when we finish unpacking.” Darcy opened her mouth to protest Natasha's continued insistence on helping her, then shut it at the sight of the redhead's raised eyebrow.

“Thanks,” she said, instead. Natasha hummed agreeably, pushing herself off the mattress and back towards the pile of boxes by the fridge.

“When do you start classes?” she asked, as she placed a toaster on the tiny counter.

Darcy sighed. “I can't officially do anything until the spring, but I talked a professor into letting me audit Principles of Criminal Justice. He said if I can catch up, then I can take the final, informally, and if I do alright he'll put in a good word for me with the admissions board. Then I can enroll in the spring, if I'm accepted. Thankfully, some of my credits from Culver should transfer. So I won't be starting completely from scratch.”

Natasha nodded, satisfied, then asked, "And Doctor Foster?" 

Darcy peered into the box of sweaters before her, brow furrowing. "I... She needs someone who understands what she's doing, who can help her push her work forward. I've talked with my friend at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. She has some students who have really excelled in their physics classes and want to learn more about the kind of work Jane's doing, so..."

"Have you told her?" Natasha plugged in the microwave she'd placed above the fridge, then turned to Darcy, waiting for a response.

"Yeah. She took it... okay. She made me promise to still come have breakfast with her once in a while. I'll miss her and all, but... I think it's for the best. She's still more upset about the break-in and my arrest, to be honest."

Natasha's mouth slid up into a sly grin. "Well, at least all those pesky charges have been dropped against you. That should make starting classes easier."

"Yeah, how'd you swing that, by the way? Don't even pretend like you didn't have something to do with it. When the public defender told me I was off the hook, I was so amazed I almost slapped the poor guy." Natasha exhaled in amusement, and transferred a stack of bowls into an overhead cabinet. "I could tell you, milaya, but then I'd have to kill you."

+

Later, while Darcy's mouth was burning from the heat of their Jamaican meal, Natasha asked quietly, “And... money?”

“I'll be okay,” Darcy gasped between gulps of water. “I have a little saved up, and my dad has reluctantly agreed to help out with Darcy Goes to College Two: Detective Boogaloo. He's not thrilled I'm studying criminal justice but he said it could still lead to me being a police chief commissioner or the mayor of New York or something one day. Good ol' Lucas Lewis never gives up on the dream.”

Natasha smiled, then leaned back in her seat. Her face turned pensive. “I know you don't want to talk about the elephant in the room, daragaya, but I think we must. What about Barnes?”

“What about him? I was living at the tower for two weeks. Didn't see him or hear from him once,” Darcy spit out.

“Did you reach out to him?”

Darcy took another sip of water to forestall answering. Natasha's sharp green eyes watched her incisively, and her skin itched with anxiety. “There's nothing to say. This is what I want to do with my life, Natasha. He's on board or he's not.”

Natasha sighed, took another bite of her chicken and rice, then nodded.

“So what about Roxxon, and Jones?” Darcy asked, purposefully changing the topic. “What's gonna happen to them?”

A shadow passed over Natasha's face, and Darcy's eyebrows raised almost of their own volition. “Hugh Jones III does not yet realize it,” Natasha's silky voice was calm and menacing, “But he has overreached this time, and his life is on the verge of total collapse. You helped make that happen, Darcy. Do not ever forget that.”

Darcy nodded, sweat beading along her forehead. “Thanks, Natasha,” she answered in a small voice.

+

“Good morning New York, and Happy Thanksgiving! Today is Thursday, November twenty-sixth and the time is just after ten am. You're listening to Trish Talk on WNEX and I'm your host, Trish Walker. The weather this morning is cloudy with intermittent drizzle, but things should be clearing up to let us have a beautiful, sunny afternoon with a high of sixty five. For all our Jersey commuters, there was an accident in the Manhattan-bound Holland Tunnel and right now it looks as though traffic is backed-up to about exit fifteen on the turnpike, but things are still moving on the George Washington Bridge so consider using that routes to get into the city today. For those taking the Lincoln Tunnel, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is also in full swing right now, making its way down Fifth Avenue! Keep in mind that most of midtown on the west side has been blocked off for pedestrian traffic this morning and make sure you plan accordingly.

Here at Trish Talk we like to start off with some local news, and without question our top story this morning is the incredible downfall of Roxxon Oil & Energy's Hugh Jones III. Jones is of course the grandson of Hugh Jones, the founder of Roxxon Oil, and is currently Chief Executive Officer of the corporation and all its subsidiaries. He was handcuffed and arrested by the New York Police Department at his midtown brownstone at 5:15 am this morning after the Securities Exchange Commission filed thirteen charges of market fraud and insider trading against him and several of his associates.

Things got worse for Jones while he was in custody. At seven am, a joint task force from the ATF partnered with the Department of Homeland Security received a warrant for search and seizure of all research equipment and materials inside of Roxxon Corporation Headquarters, located in downtown Manhattan. The task force said they were tipped off to the production of illegal, highly dangerous biochemical weapons inside the building a week ago, from a reliable source who, for now, wishes to remain anonymous.

Roxxon's market share has plummeted to an all-time low this morning and an arrest warrant for Roxxon's CFO, William Henderson, has been issued. He was not found at his New Jersey home when police arrived earlier this morning. The NYPD and the SEC have asked that if Henderson is listening to this report, he turn himself over to the nearest police station. He is currently considered to be at large.

In the last turn of bad luck for Jones, the clientele list for a local escort service, NYC Elite Escorts, was leaked online some time last night. The information went viral within hours and several highly-visible members of the New York State Senate and New York City Council have issued statements this morning about the appearance of their names on it. Two judges from the Superior Court circuit have already stepped down in an effort to avoid scandal and the shock waves in the New York City political system are expected to affect several more key players in the coming weeks. Included on that list was Hugh Jones III, who at this time has not issued a statement. When reached for comment, his wife had this to say:

_"Mr. Jones and I have loved and supported each other for many years, but unfortunately we have grown apart and although we will remain a cohesive parental unit for our children, we have agreed to file for divorce. That is all I have to say right now, and we ask that you please respect our privacy and the privacy of our children during this difficult time."_

In other news this morning...

+

On a grey afternoon in early December, Jessica Jones was waddling through six inches of snow, stepping gingerly with stiff legs to avoid slipping or dropping the bag full of Chinese takeout she was carrying. She was so focused on this task that it wasn't until she was almost at the front steps of her apartment building that she noticed the familiar hour-glass figure, long brown curls peeking out from under a turquoise beanie, and dark pea coat of the short woman loitering out front. The woman was dancing from foot to foot and rubbing her mitten-clad hands in an attempt to keep warm.

Jessica stopped at the sight of her. “You stalking me?” she asked warily.

“No, I just figured this was our thing now. You say shitty stuff to me, I run away to lick my wounds, then show up again when you least expect me,” Darcy sassed.

Jessica snorted, and headed towards the door. Darcy stayed where she was standing, watching the woman enter the building. She wait a beat, then two.

“Well, Lewis? Are you coming up or do I have to roll out the fuckin' red carpet for you?” Darcy grinned, and hurried up the snow-covered stairs after her.

+

“I don't think she's going to change her mind,” Natasha said, panting, after they'd been sparring without rest for forty minutes. Bucky glowered at her from across the gym, then returned to his perusal of the arsenal. He selected a pair of rattan bastons, tossing one to his friend.

“This is what relationships are, Barnes. They're about compromise; they're a joining of disparate lives. Her life is headed in a certain direction. She's auditing a criminology course at City College, you know. She's going to enroll next semester.”

He displayed the baston for her to see, then asked, “Right-handed or left-handed?”

“ _James_ ,” she said, just the slightest hint of frustration bleeding into her voice.

“So she wants to be a shamus. Good for her. I'm sure she'll have a very illustrious career,” he snarled. He raised the baston to alert her he was ready to begin fighting, but Natasha shook her head.

“I don't believe you. You're good, but you're not that good,” she murmured. “And I'm better. So why don't you try the truth?”

He grunted, making no attempt to hide his own frustration with Natasha's placid rebuke. He snapped the baston over his knee and whirled, hurling the splintered the pieces of rattan at the wall.

“A temper tantrum, Barnes? Really?” she asked, dropping her own stick and walking towards the elevator.

“I'm scared, Natalia,” he mumbled. She stopped, and turned towards him. 

“We've talked about this.” She crossed the gym, daintily perching herself on a weight-lifting bench. He exhaled, exhaustion stealing all the tension he'd been holding in his shoulders and back, then dropped down next to her. "If you let your fear make the decisions, you're no more in control than you were with HYDRA. You're still just the finger on the trigger, not the hand holding the gun."

“I miss her,” he said, in a muted voice. “But if I felt this way so quickly... what if I get in deeper with her and things go belly up? What if we're just too different, the way we think?”

“Obviously you give up and walk away,” Natasha replied bitingly, her voice doused in sarcasm. She leaned an arm gently on his shoulder. “Barnes. We need you here, but we don't need you all the time. It's not like what she wants to do is so unimportant, so beneath your skill set. If you're scared for her, you don't want her to get hurt, who better to protect her... than you?”

“And if I fail? If she tells me to go fuck myself again, or she takes me back, and dies on my watch?”

She stood up, and looked down at him compassionately. “Well, your choices are these: try, and maybe fail, or... don't try, and definitely fail. It's up to you, but I know what mine would be. In fact, he's downstairs waiting to take me to dinner. Just think about it, bratishka.” Having said her piece, she turned and left him to his brooding.

+

It had taken a lot of cajoling and a fair amount of whiskey, but in the end, Jessica had agreed to mentor her for the requisite three years so she could get her Private Investigator's license. They'd worked out a rough schedule (although Jessica had reserved the right to change it whenever she felt like, on a day-to-day basis) and had agreed on Darcy's cut of whatever profits they made. Jessica had issued one major caveat: Darcy could not join Jessica for anything outside the office that the PI deemed “dangerous”.

“Why, though?” Darcy had asked, after throwing back their second shot then taking a bite of her eggroll.

Jessica had exhaled, taking a moment to savor the liquor burning its way down her throat. “Mostly? Because I don't want to deal with that cranky boyfriend of yours,” she'd said, slurping a spoonful of hot and sour soup. Darcy had cocked an eyebrow, not understanding the reference. “The Winter Soldier. That night, at Roxxon. He was waiting for us outside, he went ballistic when you weren't with us. Tried to tear my damn arm off, I had to knock him out so I could get out of there before the fuzz showed up.”

“You never told me this,” Darcy had uttered sharply, lines creasing in her forehead.

Jessica had looked up from her soup guiltily, reading the vexation on her newly-appointed apprentice's face. “Uh... yeah. I was pretty... out of it, when we talked. When you brought the goddamn Avengers to my apartment. I should've told you then. Anyway, those are still my terms. Nothing high-risk. That's part of the deal.”

Darcy had tried to negotiate around that, but in the end she'd agreed. She had her taser, she knew to aim for the balls, but she couldn't keep up with Jessica's insane strength and they wouldn't normally have Kitty around to phase them out of a sticky situation. “What if I get a license to carry a firearm?” she'd asked.

“We'll re-negotiate our terms,” her mentor had conceded.

She'd made herself a mug of instant hot chocolate when she got home, and sat now at the small folding table that served as her desk, dining room table, and catchall storage surface for various bits and pieces of her life. She looked around her tiny studio apartment, plastered with old film posters she'd found for cheap at a fire sale in the East Village. Her loneliness yawned within her like a great gaping wound, like she'd been run through with a broadsword, and she thought about calling one of her friends from the Black Cat, or Natasha, or Jessica. Jane, even, although she knew an evening with the astrophysicist would end with Jane scribbling equations on her napkins, distractedly responding to her attempts at conversation.

But she didn't call anyone, because this was not a vague loneliness that could be treated with any warm body. This was a specific need for one particularly well-muscled, scarred, hot-blooded body. And the need for him ached; his deep-set, blue eyes watching her intently as she spoke, the sharp vowels of his Brooklyn accent as he teased her, his hands, so different from each other but both so strong, holding her.

Hunched over her quickly cooling, congealed mug full of sugary chocolate drink, the ache churned upwards from her gut, her melancholy taking on a physical sensation that left her breathless, gasping, forehead slumped onto the table as she clutched at her spoon and tried to fight back the waves of tears that rushed up, unbidden and unstoppable.

But there was no fighting it now, so at last, Darcy stopped trying.

She wept, loudly. She bawled until her throat burned, until her nostrils were clogged with snot and her cheeks were soaked and her eyes stung. She thought she was finished, maybe, but then she howled, indignation mixing with the sorrow, and the pain began anew. Each wave of tears did nothing to check her pain, only fed it, until it reached a deafening crescendo and she had the odd, errant notion her chest might collapse from the force of her sobs.

Finally, the rush of emotion slowed to a trickle, then she felt herself hollow out. All that remained from the events of the day was exhaustion; the triumph of getting what she'd truly wanted from Jessica, and the devastation of admitting to herself how much it had cost her, caught up with Darcy all at once. She didn't even bother to rinse out her mug or perform any nightly ablutions. She simply flipped off the light switch, crawled between the sheets of her bed, and closed her eyes. The deep emptiness of a dreamless sleep descended upon her like a soothing balm, and she felt relief, then nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **win the wrist watch: persevere; come out on top; win a contest/fight/etc.**  
> 
> Here's a really great [sad] [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGaBsjuCBTU&ab_channel=ENR%C3%ADQUEZC.F.).


	15. take all the tricks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I know I'm bad | To jump on you like this | Some things don't change | My middle name's still Risk"
> 
> Emilíana Torrini, _Sunny Road_

Darcy had cut way back on her hours at the Black Cat Diner by late December, but she still held onto her weekend double shifts and the rush of tips they brought in. She also still worked the third shift on Wednesdays. She couldn't say exactly why'd she agreed to that; Annette hadn't told her that she had to, she made almost no tips, it was a ghost town by one am, and she was usually a jittery, over-caffeinated mess by the time she rolled into Principles of Criminal Justice on Thursday mornings.

Maybe it was nostalgia. Maybe she just liked to have the quiet time and familiar space to study. Maybe she was hoping _someone_ would stop by one day. The last one was a regular daydream of hers, like maybe one night she'd be there, hanging on the counter and reviewing her notes, and she'd look up to see the piercing, laughing eyes of a certain sergeant staring back at her.

At the thought, Darcy looked up at the windowed side of the diner. All she could see was the snow being whipped around in the dark, the only sound was the wailing of the night wind. She sighed, refilled her coffee, and resumed her studying. Sometime around two she noted that the storm was still raging outside, so she ducked down into the cellar to grab the salt and a shovel. When she ascended the stairs she left them in the kitchen, planning to either take care of the sidewalk when the sun came up or perhaps cajole one of the kitchen guys into doing it for her.

She exited the kitchen, and stopped dead in her tracks. There was a tall, broad-shouldered man in the diner. He was wearing a fur-lined black leather coat, jeans and heavy snow boots. He sat on a stool by the counter, his face obscured by a thick grey scarf and a black wool hat pulled down low on his brow. Thick, wet clumps of snow clung to his clothing.

His melancholic, cerulean eyes met hers and she had to remind herself to breathe. He pulled off the scarf, and there was Bucky's lovely dimpled chin, his typical five o'clock shadow. He grabbed his hat and his dark locks, longer and more unkempt since the last time she'd seen him, toppled down around his face. He stared at her, apprehension written across his wearied features. 

She took a deep breath, and went to the cabinet behind the counter, grabbing a mug and the pot of coffee. She filled the mug, slid it across the counter-top towards him. He pulled the glove from his right hand, dropped it onto the pile with his scarf and hat, and warmed his skin against the mug's exterior. He took a sip, then grimaced.

“Terrible as ever,” Darcy said softly, trying to smile and not quite remembering how.

“Got you something.” His deep voice was hoarse, and although she knew he was speaking quietly, she felt as though it filled up the entire diner, booming resonantly. He ducked down until his shoulder was level with the counter, then returned with a large, slightly sodden box. There was a red velvet ribbon wrapped around it, tied into an ornate bow on top.

“Bucky...”

“Please. Please open it,” he begged, his voice cracking plaintively.

Darcy took in the purple shadows under his eyes, the way his right hand was gripping the mug so tightly his knuckles had gone white, the way his leg was bouncing nervously under the ledge of the counter.

“Okay,” she breathed, tugging at one end of the ribbon until it fell away, then lifting the top of the box. Inside, wrapped in white tissue paper, was a black motorcycle jacket. It was exquisitely crafted, waist-length with an off-center zipper and a detachable flannel liner, and when she reached out to brush her fingertips down the front, the leather was smooth and supple. She lifted it, astonished, and darted a hopeful glance at Bucky. She twisted as she pulled it on; it fit her perfectly. She tucked her nose into the shoulder, breathing in the scent of new leather. “I love it.” She glanced at his anxious face then hesitated, feeling unsure what to say next.

“As soon as I saw it, I knew you had to have it. What kinda gumshoe would you be without a proper leather jacket?”

It was too much. She bit her lip but the tears welled up despite her best efforts. He stood. Haltingly, giving her time to stop him, he made his way around the counter. Darcy opened her arms to him and hiccuped, overcome, when he reached for her. She buried her face in his wool sweater-covered chest, reveling in the feel of his strong arms as they wrapped around her, the smell of motor oil, leather, coffee, and aftershave all mixing together to create something infinitely more than the sum of its parts, a smell that was uniquely him. “Merry Christmas, Darcy,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion.

“This is my favorite one ever,” she whispered, sniffling, then pushed up onto her toes to brush her lips against his.

+

“I want to take you on a date, this time. A real one.”

“We've gone on dates.”

“Nah, we've just fooled around in your bedroom while we pretended to watch movies.”

“Yeah, exactly. Dates. I mean, would taking me to the soda fountain somehow make this real?”

“It's always been real, darling, I just want you to feel that as much as I do.”

“Bucky, I... I feel it. I've always felt it.”

“I... It's strange. Got this body of a young man. I feel like a young man, sometimes. But I'm old, to you. Old-fashioned I mean. That's why I stayed away so long, kitten. Thought maybe I just... couldn't ever catch up to you. To this century. Your century.”

“I like that you're old-fashioned. I like the way you talk, the way you carry yourself, how you see the world. I like that you wanna take care of me, wanna protect me. I want that too. But I don't want you to own me.”

“Can I at least... have a piece of you? Say, your back, for instance?”

“Why, Sergeant Barnes, are you asking to be my hired muscle?”

“Sweetheart, you're cute as button but you're not exactly working with the same... stuff... as that boss of yours. Think I could be of assistance.”

“You noticed that, huh? I've never met anyone so strong. I think it might be, y'know, extra. Enhanced human or mutant or whatever you wanna call it. Anyway, the thing where you're the Kevin Costner to my Whitney Houston? I could be into that.”

“Huh?”

“Watch my six. Guard my goods. Be my butter and egg man.”

“That's not what that last one means, honey.”

“Well, you get the point. And... you should probably teach me how to throw a punch. Jessica refuses to. I swear to God, she is the worst mentor in the world sometimes.”

“Remind me again why you hang around with her?”

“Just can't get enough of you leather-wearing rebel types, I guess.”

“You're one of us now, Darce. Welcome to the club.”

“Mm-hmm. It's been a long time coming.”

+

When Veronica Mars flew out to Manhattan to attend the annual Conference of American Investigators that Spring, she, Jessica Jones, and Darcy Lewis spent about twenty-five minutes at the first session, a slideshow presentation on the importance of utilizing search engine optimization on an agency's website, before the raven-haired investigator leaned in towards her blonde friend and muttered under her breath, “Please don't make me listen to one more second of this.”

Veronica sighed with relief, nodding enthusiastically, and grabbed Darcy's hand when she tried to protest that the information was useful, dragging the woman behind them as they hightailed it out of the Grand Central Hilton's large meeting room. The three of them ended up monopolizing a table at the back of an Irish pub a block away, and after checking hesitantly with Jessica, who still was not Bucky's biggest fan, Darcy sent him a text and he joined them soon after, Natasha trailing behind.

About two hours into their DIY investigator's conference, Natasha took a decisive sip of her vodka tonic, then said, “Okay. Worst scumbag you've ever put down.”

“Can I count Hugh Jones?” Darcy asked. Jessica snorted loudly and Natasha gave her a dark look, then answered, “Of course. We wouldn't have been tipped off to what he was doing without you. Jones is a good choice, there was no kind of corruption that man didn't like.”

“Kilgrave,” Jessica spit out, downing her shot of SoCo and lime then rising, stomping off in the direction of the bar for another round.

“Hmm.” Veronica leaned back in her chair. “Hard to say. I've put a _lot_ of truly terrible people behind bars.”

Running her fingers through the soft hairs at the nape of Bucky's neck, Darcy asked, "What about you, Natasha?"

Natasha smiled grimly, playing with the ring of liquid her glass had left on the table. "Lot of terrible people in my files, too. Think I have to go with Loki, purely on the basis of how much power-"

“Jesus, no need to brag, Romanov. We're all pretty big deals,” Jessica teased as she distributed drinks, having returned with a tray of tequila-filled shot glasses and a beer for herself.

Darcy began giggling, lightheaded from the alcohol and from Bucky's mouth teasing at the tender skin under her jaw. “Oh come on, you two, get a room!” Veronica scolded. “'Kay, I have it now. Aaron Echolls. Basically the reason my teenage years played out like a Lew Archer novel. That guy was just... woof, what a psycho.”

“The movie star?” Natasha cocked her head in surprise. “That one was you? Cheers everyone, by the way.” They all paused their conversation for a moment to lick the salt from their hands, Bucky electing to use Darcy's, then clinked their shot glasses together and knocked them back.

Veronica shuddered, and snatched a lemon slice from the plate Jessica was passing around, shoving it in her mouth. “Yep, that was me," she said, her lips pursed from the sour fruit, "And I was dating his son at the time! Kind of. It was an on-again, off-again thing. Still is, really.” She sighed, sliding the empty shot glass away from herself and taking a sip of her martini.

“Barnes?” Jessica tilted her beer back, imbibing heartily, then pointed it towards him. “You're being awfully quiet. You never took down any scumbags?”

“Yeah, sure. Some good men too. But I don't think I'd like to count the ones while I was with HYDRA, if it's all the same to you, Jones,” he said calmly, before returning to his gimlet. Darcy rolled her eyes and swung around in her seat toward Bucky, leaning into his arm.

Jessica was forever baiting him, trying to get a rise out of him. Darcy halfway suspected she wanted him to fight her, for real this time, just to see if she could beat him. But Bucky persistently robbed her of any satisfaction with his intractably neutral responses. She could tell by the way the corners of his mouth ticked up ever so slightly whenever he did it, and Natasha's too when she was around, that Bucky enjoyed thwarting Jessica almost as much as she enjoyed goading him. It was a kind of friendship, Darcy figured, and it was probably good enough for the time being.

She leaned in, combing her fingers through his shaggy hair and resting her chin on his sweater-covered metallic shoulder. “What about the nazis, baby?” 

“Barely counts,” he said dismissively.

“Absolutely counts,” Natasha countered. “This is not an evening for false modesty, Barnes, so enough of that.” He grinned at her, then turned to Darcy, stroking his mechanized hand down her back while nuzzling his face against her neck, returning to his task of kissing that spot that made her melt for him.

“Ugh, no. Veto. I can't with you two, it's too sickeningly cute,” Veronica protested, downing her martini and hopping up from her seat, drifting off towards the bar.

Natasha smirked, and said, “Okay, new question. Most _personal_ victory.”

“Ugh, boring, Romanov!” Jessica griped. “Still Kilgrave. What the hell is this music? I need to have a word with those idiots.” She grabbed her beer and sauntered off towards the pack of college students hovering around the jukebox who had now chosen three dubstep songs in a row.

Darcy smirked as she watched her mentor dress them down. “Well, what about you, daragaya? Personal victory?” Natasha asked.

She leaned on her hand, chewing her lip and fiddling with Bucky's hair while she thought. He took another swallow of his gimlet, glancing at her sideways. “I've only had the one case, really, just been following Jessica around since then. But I survived Loki's attack in New Mexico, when he sent the Destroyer, so I guess I'd go with that one. I mean, I saved a bunch of animals from a pet shop while facing death by fire. Kind of a big deal. How about you?”

“Joining SHIELD, and helping Fury start the Avengers Initiative,” Natasha said without hesitation.

“Really, Nat?” Bucky prodded. “You've had a lot of pretty big wins. What about Budapest, or Seoul?”

“Important, I'll give you that,” she said, finishing her vodka tonic. “But leaving HYDRA was truly personal. Oh! Wait. I know my second biggest victory.” Her smile softened as her attention turned inward to some private, happy memory.

“What's your second? Is it, like, defeating the ruler of the universe or something?” Jessica teased, having ambled back to the table.

"Not quite that powerful, at least I don't think," Natasha purred evasively, her gaze turning speculative. "Although, I wonder... in any case, my second personal victory is currently wrapped up with his research back at Stark tower. I'll let him have another hour of work before I go distract him."

“What are we talking about?” Veronica was passing out another round of shots, bourbon this time. She'd brought the bottle with her as well. “Cheers to detectives, interns, spies, and assassins. Drink up!” She threw the shot back after touching her glass against the others.

“Victories,” Darcy answered. “Personal ones. You, Veronica?”

“Clearing my dad's name, definitely,” she said. Natasha refilled their shot glasses and they all toasted to that.

“I've got one,” Bucky said quietly, hiding his sly smile in his glass as he drained the last of his gimlet.

“Oh no, I know that look. You're about to say something disgustingly romantic about my apprentice and then I'll have to dislike you a little bit less. Please dude, for the love of God, I'm practically on the verge of befriending you. And between Trish, Malcolm, Darcy, Romanov, and this one," she thumbed towards Veronica, who puffed her cheeks with affected indignation, "I've filled my lifetime quota on quirky strays. Take pity on me.” Jessica slapped her pale hand over Bucky's mouth. His smile widened, and he arched an eyebrow at her. “Ugh, fine. Go ahead. I'll never forgive you for this,” she relented, pouting, and swallowed the last of her beer.

“My biggest personal victory is getting my head outta my ass, becoming a modern man, and helping my girl be the best damn detective in this filthy city,” he said, his hands clutching Darcy's waist as he dragged her, chair and all, towards him. She beamed at him and leaned in to kiss him tenderly, the embrace quickly deepening into something intense and needy.

“Ugh! Modern man my ass, you caveman. Plus you insult me _and_ you assault my eyes with your PDA, at the same time? How dare you!?” Jessica threw up her hands in mock outrage, then turned to Veronica. “Are you seeing this? Are you _hearing_ this? The best detective? She's still in training! For like, many more years!”

“Blinded by love,” Veronica agreed, shaking her head.

“Hush, you two,” Natasha scolded. “Come on, we're going to go rewire the jukebox to play something that doesn't make my ears bleed, and then we're going to dance.” She stood up, pulling on Veronica's hand who, in turn, clutched Jessica's. The preternaturally strong woman rolled her eyes but allowed herself to be dragged along.

Bucky and Darcy barely noticed them leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **take all the tricks: clean up; to get everything one wants, or to have a situation play out to one's inclinations**
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> If you've read my story to this point, first of all, thank you. Seriously. Thanks for even giving it your time. Second of all, I hope the angst wasn't too much. I wanted to write a realistic relationship (considering the characters' backgrounds) and conflict between Bucky and Darcy. I also wanted to write a neo-noir story that was, like, teeming with detectives. Basically all of these main characters are running around behaving like detectives, and I hope it wasn't too OOC. I hope I pulled it off. Third of all, this last scene is pure wish fulfillment, for me, since we'll never actually get to have Natasha Romanov, Jessica Jones, Veronica Mars, and Darcy Lewis on-screen together.
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> But a girl can [dream [link to one of my all-time favorite songs]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i97b6brnWCc&ab_channel=Emil%C3%ADanaTorrini).


	16. tip your mitt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Love is the harmony | Desire is the key | Love is a symphony | Now play it with me"
> 
> Lykke Li, _Melodies & Desires_

“You know these aren't enough to keep me here, right?” Bucky glanced at the scarves wrapped around his wrists, tied to each of his bed posts and holding his arms extended, then smirked at Darcy.

“Yes, baby, I'm aware of that,” she answered in a droll voice, rolling her eyes as she cinched the second knot. She tested it, found it satisfactory, and nodded to herself. 

“I have to say, kitten, I'm still a little surprised you're into this. I don't mind it, but I wouldn't have guessed,” he ventured. Darcy didn't answer, preoccupied as she was with her worship of his chest. She kissed the gnarled scars of his left pectoral softly, than looked up at him. She smiled coyly, and pinched his nipple. He hissed, his head falling back against the headboard. “Trouble. I've been sayin' it all along.”

Darcy continued her exploration of him, sliding her hands up his chiseled abdomen, tickling at his ribs, then wrapping her arms around him to scratch her name lightly across the broad, muscled plane of his back. She leaned into him, pressing her full breasts again him, and smiled when he began panting lightly. He felt her soft lips brush his neck, then his jaw, then the shell of his ear. “This isn't for me, Bucky. This is my gift to you.”

“It is?” he asked, raising an eyebrow when she reared back to teasingly nibble at his lips.

“Yes,” she murmured. “It's symbolic.”

He pushed up against her, trying to control the kiss, and she pulled away. “Explain it like I'm dense, darlin'.”

She huffed in amusement and scooted backwards, unzipping his jeans and pulling them down his legs. His briefs followed.

“It's about us,” she whispered, right before she took his rigid length in her mouth, running her tongue along against the sensitive vein. She hollowed out her cheeks, then slid her lips upwards, before licking at the tip delicately and peering at up at him through her eyelashes. The sight was almost enough to make him come, and as if sensing that, she pulled away. She traced her fingernails through the dark hairs on his legs, scratching lightly. “It's about control. We're sharing it. You're letting me make you feel good. Because you trust me.”

She crawled off the bed and left the room. Bucky craned his head, trying to see what she was doing, then he heard the kitchen faucet run. He leaned back, and she appeared in the doorway, naked. She paused there, admiring the sight of him, rock hard and short-winded and restrained. Hers. He did his share of admiring as well, eyeing her dusky nipples, the creamy pale skin of her limbs and soft stomach, and the slight peek at her glistening nether lips as she walked. She shuffled back across the sheets on her knees and swung a leg over him, settling herself on his lap. She tipped the glass towards his mouth, and he took a long, deep drink from it. She turned the glass and drank from the same spot where his mouth had been, then stretched across the bed and placed the glass on his night stand. He admired the way her breasts swayed as she moved and leaned towards her, planting whisper soft kisses along her clavicle.

“I trust you, Darcy,” he said earnestly. One side of her mouth quirked, and she took him in her hand, stroking lightly. Then she lifted herself up, lined him up, and sank down onto him.

They both groaned at the sensation, how perfectly they fit together, and Darcy slumped over his chest, her arms hanging off the back of the headboard, as she let herself adjust the feel of him, filling and stretching her. Soon she began to languidly gyrate her hips in minute circles. “And I trust you. When we're on the clock, I trust you to keep me alive. And to scare all the big, bad men who wanna hurt me, wanna stop me from doing my job. But in here, I trust you not to rip my scarves. To let me take the reins.” Her breath tickled the skin under his ear and he shivered, so she kissed him there. It was soothing, but it also riled him, and without thinking he bucked his hips up into her.

She mewled against the corded tendons of his neck, then nipped at his ear lobe. Using his firm chest to push her torso away from him, she raised an eyebrow in challenge and began to move in earnest, first rocking against him and then bouncing with vigor, grinding her clitoris against him on each down-stroke.

“Can I...Can I have one hand, at least?” he heaved, as he peered down at their joining.

“Uh-uh,” she whispered, thumbing at his nipples then stroking along his chest, up to his jaw, directing his mouth to her breast. He licked the puckered bud, then took it in his mouth, sucking. He turned his head to give the other the same treatment. He mouthed at her soft breast, tasting the salty sweat that had begun to drop in rivulets down her sternum.

“Come closer,” he moaned.

She was playing with herself with one hand, the other resting on his metallic bicep, and she had her head thrown back, eyes closed. The ends of her brown locks were tickling the tops of his bent knees. He laid the soles of his feet on the mattress and thrust upwards in earnest, and her eyes opened wide when he struck at that bundle of nerves inside her that always reduced her to a quivering mess.

“Do that again,” she whispered.

“Come closer,” his voice had taken on a tone both commanding and piteous so she decided to have mercy and bent her elbows, lowering herself until she was resting her chest against his once more.

“Well hello, sergeant,” she crooned at him, when he gave another solid thrust.

“I need more, darlin',” he grunted, his hips pistoning wildly as he captured her mouth in a lewd, messy kiss. The feeling of him, hot and throbbing and plundering so deep inside her slick walls, left her breathless and she nodded at him, then reached behind to hold onto the headboard with both hands. Her knuckles went white from the effort needed to hold on while he rocked up into her, and she let out a few high-pitched moans then caught his mouth again. He pushed up into her as deeply as he could and stayed there, buried deep, his hips continuing to twist and roll as he came. 

The contact of him directly against her, the feel of him brushing against those nerves so deep inside her, was all she needed. She keened, her tense limbs twitching, then going slack as a warm wave of pleasure spread out from her core. She tucked her face into his neck, placing a delicate kiss against the spot where she could feel, with her lips, his racing pulse. He thrust into her once more, a reflexive movement, then went supine beneath her.

She groaned, and lifted herself off of him, although she stayed in his lap. She untied one of his hands, then the other. “Not a single rip,” she said, beaming at him benevolently.

“Told you, I trust you.”

He used his now free hands to pull her down onto him once more, writing his own invisible messages on the curvature of her waist then out across her back. “You writing secrets?” she asked in a hushed tone.

“It's sappy,” he teased.

“Will you tell me?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, kissing her dewy face gently. “When you're ready to hear it.”

She smiled at him, her face soft with tenderness. “I'm ready. I'll say it first, so it's less scary. Bucky Barnes, of the seven billion human souls on this planet, not a single one of them can say that they've lived a life like the one you have. You are utterly, irrevocably unique. And I love that. I don't think I'll ever want anybody else but you.”

He laughed a little, a blush forming across his chiseled cheekbones. “You're something else, sweetheart.”

“Something what?”

“Something, I don't know. Indescribable. Something I need, I think I'll always need. I need you to keep me grounded here. You gotta stay because nothing makes a damn lick of sense without you, none of it. And it ain't worth a hill of beans.”

“You stole that from Casablanca. You and Bogart, I swear,” she admonished, a playful grin lighting up her face.

“Well, you know what they say. If you're going to steal, steal from the best.” He was running his right hand through her tangled curls, gently working out the knots. She turned her head, and laid her ear against his chest.

“I can hear your heart beating,” she said, gazing up with wonder.

“All for you, kitten.” He relaxed back into the pillows and closed his eyes. Her lids began to droop as well and she reached down to the foot of the bed to retrieve the tossed-aside duvet and drape it over their bodies. Then she hugged him tightly and nestled her face into the crook of his neck.

“Happy birthday, Bucky.” She spoke against the tender skin there, and his arms came up to envelop her, squeezing her ass then settling on her back.

“Mmm,” his voice rumbled with contentment and well-being. “This is my favorite one, ever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tip your mitt: show your hand, reveal something**  
>     
> Hi! This last chapter was just smut. But like, meaningful smut. Justifiable smut, if you will.
> 
> If you enjoyed the fun noir slang I used in this fic, I recommend [this site](http://iantregillis.com/words/a-hardboiled-slang-glossary-for-something-more-than-night/money) and [this one](https://www.miskatonic.org/slang.html) for more. There were so many phrases and words that I loved that I couldn't find a place for, it really is fun to read through them all.  
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> 
> Finally, I guess I have a request of sorts? I am currently writing another story (which is crazy to me because I didn't think I would have any more ideas but here we are) but I was thinking it might be helpful to have another set of eyes on it. I feel like I always have to do at least three rounds of edits after I post something here because there seems to be a special brand of typos in my writing that I am only able to see once it has been publicly displayed. It's mystifying. So, if anyone would be interested in acting as a beta reader for me, please let me know! I'm pretty new to AO3 so I don't know if there is a standard way of going about this but you can always email me at: voicedimplosives@outlook.com
> 
> Okay, that's all from me! Thanks again for reading this [and if you liked/hated it/found a gaping plot hole I missed, comments make this scribbler a happy wren :D ].
> 
> P.S. Oh yeah and here's a [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMHL1Eqrq6k&ab_channel=flanita)!


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